


Dark Blue Tie

by meadowfoam



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Fluff, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Pining, Post-Banquet, Romantic Gestures
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2019-11-16 13:39:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 44,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18095372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meadowfoam/pseuds/meadowfoam
Summary: Yuuri wakes up the morning after the banquet with Victor Nikiforov’s tie around his head and a crystal-clear memory of everything he did the night before.Victor wakes up the morning after the banquet with twelve of Yuuri Katsuki’s past programs in his YouTube history and the happiest hangover of his life.When a mortified Yuuri seeks Victor out to return his tie and apologize, he finds himself invited in for breakfast instead—the start of a long-distance friendship that ends up putting Yuuri’s skating season back on track and risks derailing Victor’s season entirely.





	1. Sochi

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the [Viktuuri Fluff Bang](https://viktuurifluffbang.tumblr.com/)! This is the first bang I've ever participated in, and I want to give heartfelt thanks to my amazing artist [izzyisozaki](https://twitter.com/izzyisozaki), not only for her tender, wonderful, squee-worthy art of Victor and Yuuri, but also for her ongoing help and support with the fic itself. Thank you so much!
> 
> Content Warning: Because this fic deals with the aftermath of Yuuri's loss at the Grand Prix Final, Vicchan's passing is mentioned several times in a non-graphic way.

Yuuri wakes up to a dark room and no memory of where he is.

He’s not home. His tired mind doesn’t even have an image to go with the thought of _home:_ he lived in one place for eighteen years and then three different places over five years, and none of them show up in his mind when he thinks of the word _home_. Yuuri sits up and looks around. He blearily takes in a small hotel room, blackout curtains shut over the windows, a faintly snoring lump in the other twin bed. Celestino.

Right. Celestino, sleeping in their shared hotel room, because they’re out of the country for one of Yuuri’s competitions. Where are they? Yuuri rubs at his eyes and thinks. Russia, right? Sochi.

The Grand Prix Final.

Then it all comes bursting through the thin membrane that sleep had woven over his memories. The Grand Prix Final, where Yuuri had crashed and burned so spectacularly that over a hundred points separated him from first place. Sochi, where his years of putting off a trip to see his family finally caught up with him in heartbreaking fashion. Russia, where Yuuri’s grief and mental weakness laid him so low that he’d humiliated himself in front of the one person in the world he wanted to impress the most. Victor Nikiforov had put in another spectacular performance, and Yuuri had started out the competition full of hope, determined to make Victor see he was a worthy competitor. And then...

Yuuri buries his head in his hands. There’s an aching hollowness where his stomach is supposed to be, and an aching fire inside his head. The tips of his fingers alight on something smooth: there’s a strip of cloth pulled taut around Yuuri’s forehead. Yuuri worms a finger underneath it and tugs it off. It’s a tie.

He blinks at it uncomprehendingly. Phichit has more than one photo of Yuuri dead drunk with his tie wrapped around his head, and it’s the same tie every time, because Yuuri only owns one. Yuuri’s tie is light blue and made of scratchy polyester. The tie in his hands is dark blue and made of silk, and when he lifts it up to examine it more closely, he gets a distinct whiff of champagne.

Champagne.

Yuuri goes rigid. “Oh no,” he says out loud. “Oh no. _Oh no._ _”_

 

***

 

Victor wakes up to the sound of a ringing phone and the happiest hangover of his life.

He picks up the receiver of the hotel’s landline: it’s his 8AM wake-up call. The Victor of three days ago had set up the call so he would have plenty of time to prepare for his early afternoon flight. He hates the Victor of three days ago. The Victor of three days ago should’ve magically intuited that Victor would be up until 4AM the night before his flight, lying in bed with his phone balanced on his chest, watching the decade-long career of Yuuri Katsuki play out through grainy YouTube video.

It’s an incomplete record. Most of Yuuri’s performances since he transitioned to Seniors are online, but his Junior performances are thinner on the ground. There is exactly one video of Yuuri skating pre-Juniors, in some regional Japanese competition, and in it Yuuri is tiny and earnest and so painfully, beautifully determined that Victor had to pause the video and pull the covers over his face to compose himself. Yuuri was so cute. He was so, so, so—

Victor drops the hotel phone back in its cradle, and the loud _clang_ sends a streak of pain through his head. If he’s got a throbbing head from only a few glasses of champagne, he can hardly imagine how Yuuri is feeling at the moment. Victor thinks about getting up, getting some water and aspirin, getting into the shower to wash the stale scent of sweat and alcohol out of his hair. He does none of those things. He picks up his cell phone from the nightstand and opens up his photo gallery.

He has nine pictures of Yuuri breakdancing with a visibly enraged Yuri Plisetsky, five pictures of Yuuri getting progressively less clothed as he effortlessly one-ups Chris Giacometti at pole-dancing, and two precious pictures of himself and Yuuri mid- _paso doble._ Chris had sent him those last two about five minutes after Victor bundled Yuuri into a cab back to the hotel. _I thought you_ _’d probably want these,_ Chris wrote, in the understatement of the century. “Look,” Victor had said to Yuuri, who was drowsily tucked up against his side in the back seat. “It’s me and you.”

Yuuri squinted at the phone. “Wait,” he said, tapping his own image with a clumsy finger. “I was wearing a tie.” He felt around his throat. “Where did it go?”

The last time Victor remembered seeing it, it had been wrapped around Yuuri’s forehead, coming loose and drooping over his eyes. Yuuri had pulled it off and flung it away, and Victor had thought _“Good riddance.”_ It didn’t complement his eyes or his skin tone at all. “I think we might have left it at the banquet,” Victor said. “Accidentally.”

“Oh no,” Yuuri said, visibly deflating. “Should I go back for it? I should go back. I don’t have another tie.”

Victor smoothed Yuuri’s hair back off his forehead. “It’s probably too late,” he lied. “They’re probably cleaning the ballroom as we speak.”

Yuuri groaned. Victor had no idea why such a mediocre tie was inspiring such despondence in him. Maybe it had sentimental value? “I’ll tell you what,” Victor said. “Let’s try this.”

He quickly undid his own tie, looped it around Yuuri’s neck, and started to re-knot it. Yuuri stared down at Victor’s hands with wide eyes, poking the dark blue cloth with a hesitant fingertip. “I like this shade better on you anyway,” Victor said. “Blue’s your signature color, right? I think every time I’ve seen you perform, you’ve been wearing either blue or black.”

Yuuri’s entire face slowly scrunched up into a suspicious point. “When did you see me perform?”

“Live?” Victor asked. “Well, four or five times, at least, when we were competing in the same event. And I know I saw you on the Four Continents livestream last year. In the free skate, you had those long draped sleeves with the blue gradient, right? I liked those.”

Yuuri stared at him. Then, distressingly, his face scrunched up again: not with suspicion, but with misery. “What’s wrong?” Victor asked, alarmed.

“I didn’t want you to see me until I was _good_ ,” Yuuri said.

“What are you talking about?” Victor said. “Did you forget what competition you’re in Russia for? You’re very good.”

“Not good enough,” Yuuri said, with unexpected bitterness.

Yuuri had admittedly experienced a very bad free skate the day before; bad enough that Victor thought he might be concealing an injury from the press. It had been a long time since Victor had suffered through a skate like that, error compounding upon error, going into every jump knowing he would fall out of it. It was a terrible feeling. But it wasn’t like one bad skate erased all of Yuuri’s previous accomplishments. Victor pulled the knot of the tie snug against Yuuri’s throat, maybe a little tighter than was strictly necessary, trying to distract him from his unhappiness. “Okay,” Victor said, taking out his phone. “What do you think? It looks good, right?”

He turned on the forward-facing camera so Yuuri could see for himself. Yuuri studied his image, fingers stroking the tie. “It’s not what I’m used to,” he said. “But I think I like it.”

Then he slid his finger in the knot, tugged the tie loose again, and with great care and deliberation tied it around his forehead. Victor watched him do it with steadily mounting delight and held up the camera for him when he was done. Yuuri examined the result. “Yes,” he said. “I like it.”

“Me too,” Victor said, putting the camera away. “You should keep it.”

“No,” Yuuri said, but he didn’t make any move to take it off, and when Victor slipped his arm behind Yuuri’s back and pulled him close again, Yuuri laid his tie-bedecked head on Victor’s shoulder and went back to dozing.

Now, lying in bed, swiping back and forth between the two pictures he has of them together, Victor remembers the weight of Yuuri’s head on his shoulder and feels a thrill so acute that he has to pull the covers over his face again.

He brings the phone underneath with him.

 

***

 

Yuuri remembers everything.

Memories of the previous night march through his head like enemy soldiers crossing a battlefield. He can’t stop them from coming, no matter how hard he tries to will them away. He puts the heels of his hands against his eyes and groans. He had been _so sad_ , and then he’d been _so drunk_ , and then he’d been _so happy_. Everything seemed like a good idea. Challenging Yuri Plisetsky to a dance-off. Working a pole with Chris Giacometti. Taking Victor Nikiforov’s famous, priceless body in his own two hands and taking responsibility for their combined balance and weight. It was pure luck that he hadn’t dropped him.

Yuuri lifts his hands off his eyes and stares at his palms. Twelve hours ago those palms had been touching Victor Nikiforov: one on his thigh, one on his jaw. Twelve hours ago he had wrapped his arms around Victor Nikiforov like he was holding on to a life preserver. His childhood idol, who he was supposed to impress with his _skating,_ now knows Katsuki Yuuri as a boorish, lecherous drunk who skated what was possibly the worst free program in Grand Prix Final history.

He crushes his hands back over his eyes. His mind is a churning nightmare, set to the atonal song of Celestino’s snoring in the twin bed across the room. Victor had been minding his own business when Yuuri suddenly launched all his failure and dysfunction right into Victor’s arms, and Victor had been so _nice_ about it. He took Yuuri back to his hotel room, tried to make him feel better about his skating, even gave him his _tie_ when Yuuri got upset over losing his. Victor Nikiforov is somehow even more amazing than Yuuri had thought possible, and Yuuri can _never_ take back the first impression he made.

Yuuri hauls himself miserably out of bed and goes into the bathroom to take a shower. When he emerges fifteen minutes later, he finds Celestino’s bed empty. He probably went downstairs to get breakfast. Yuuri’s stomach is simultaneously ravenous and queasy, and the thought of going downstairs into the bright hotel dining room with its loud, chattering guests is painful. He towels off his hair, packs away his toiletries in his suitcase, and curls up on his bed to wait for death or the airplane flight home, whichever comes sooner.

Celestino comes back a few minutes later with two coffees and an unfairly cheerful look on his face. “Good morning,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

Yuuri groans from the fetal position.

“Ah,” Celestino says. He sets one of the coffees on the nightstand next to Yuuri. “How much do you remember about last night?”

“All of it,” Yuuri says into his knees. _“All of it.”_

Celestino gives him a couple of sympathetic claps on the back. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You were having a hard time. I should’ve stuck to you a little more closely during the first part of the night.”

“No,” Yuuri says dismally. “I’m an adult. My stupid mistakes are my responsibility.” He picks up the midnight-blue tie lying on the bed and thrusts it at Celestino. “I took Victor’s _tie_.”

“Yes, I asked him about that when he brought you back,” Celestino says. “He said he gave it to you.”

“Because I was having a drunken meltdown over losing mine.”

“Well,” Celestino says kindly, “if you don’t like the idea of keeping it, you can always give it back.”

He goes into the bathroom to take his shower, and Yuuri slowly uncurls from the bed and picks up the coffee on the nightstand. Give it back? Giving it back would mean finding Victor, and talking to Victor, and having to look Victor in the eye as he clumsily tries to excuse his shameless behavior. He isn’t sure he could survive the mortification. Yuuri looks at the tie, then on impulse brings it to his nose. It _smells_ like Victor, underneath the patina of champagne. God, what an insane thought that is: Yuuri knows what Victor Nikiforov smells like. The scent of him had filled his nose as he napped on Victor’s shoulder in the cab, and if Yuuri hadn’t already been drunk off the champagne, that scent would’ve turned his head upside down in a flash. If Yuuri keeps the tie, he could inhale that scent whenever he wanted, just to remind himself of the two hours of his life when he had been purely, flawlessly happy.

Except that’s creepy. That’s _so_ creepy. If anyone ever found out he was hoarding Victor Nikiforov’s old clothing, his soul would physically depart from his body. No, he has to give it back. He has to give it back and _apologize._ He and Victor are, in the loosest sense of the word, peers: they’re probably going to attend the same event at some point in the future. If Yuuri doesn’t clear the air now, the next competition they share is going to leave him an anxious nightmare.

The only problem is that he doesn’t know Victor’s room number. The hotel certainly won’t tell Yuuri what it is—Victor’s probably the most famous person in the building—and Yuuri doesn’t know anyone who _would_ know.

Well, no. That’s not true. Yuuri scrolls through his contacts until he finds _Christophe Giacometti._ A few years ago, Chris had plucked Yuuri’s phone out of his hands mid-competition and programmed in his number: “Just in case you ever get bored,” he’d said meaningfully. Yuuri never dialed it, but he knows the number is current, because last month at Skate Canada Chris plucked Yuuri’s phone out of his hands again and updated it. “Someone leaked my old number online,” he sighed. “I appreciated all the nudes people were sending me, but eventually I got tired of people ringing me up in the middle of the night.”

Yuuri takes a bracing gulp of coffee, swallows, and presses _Call_.

 

***

 

Victor, still under the covers, switches methodically back and forth between his YouTube app and Yuuri’s Wikipedia page. As much as he wants to mainline every single performance Yuuri’s ever done, he’s hindered by the fact that he technically promised Yuuri he wouldn’t. When the two of them arrived back at the hotel last night, Victor had brought Yuuri to his room and found his coach already there, nursing a migraine and looking very surprised to see them both. Celestino and Victor helped Yuuri out of his shoes and into bed, and when Celestino reached for the tie on Yuuri’s head, Yuuri batted his hand away. “No, I like it,” he insisted. “It’s Victor’s.”

Celestino gave Victor a questioning glance. “Oh, I gave it to him,” Victor said. “He lost his at the banquet.”

“Well, thank you for bringing him back,” Celestino said. “I can take care of him from here.”

He walked forward a little; his body language was asking Victor to leave. It sent a peculiar twinge through Victor. The night up until then had been so wonderful, and now it was over, so abruptly and flatly. Tomorrow he and Yuuri were going to get on separate planes, and they wouldn’t see each other again until Worlds. Victor couldn’t let that moment be their last. “What time are you checking out tomorrow?” he asked Celestino. “I’d like to come and say goodbye, before the two of you go.”

“We’ll be leaving at ten,” Celestino said.

“ _Victor,_ _”_ Yuuri said imperiously from the bed. “I have to tell you something.”

Victor, his heart lifting momentarily, went back to Yuuri’s bedside. Yuuri held his arms out like a child asking for a bedtime hug, and Victor obliged instantly, leaning down and wrapping his arms around him. “Victor,” Yuuri said, his breath warm and thrilling against Victor’s ear. “Don’t watch me skate again until I’m good.”

Victor hesitated. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’ll only watch your good skates.”

If Yuuri noticed the slight rewording of that sentence, he didn’t show it. He settled back against his pillow, content, and Victor let Celestino herd him politely to the door.

And so instead of watching everything Yuuri Katsuki has done in the last decade, Victor’s been scanning through Wikipedia, picking out the programs where Yuuri excelled: ones where he medaled, or hit a personal best, or made the top six, or—well, truth be told, Victor’s definition of _good skate_ has been very accommodating. In his cocoon under the covers, Victor decides it should definitely include Yuuri’s exhibition skates: they exist solely to entertain their audience, and are therefore good by default. He’s in the process of loading up the one from last year’s NHK Trophy when a text message pops up from Chris.

> I hope you're awake and looking presentable, my love 
> 
> A cute Japanese boy just called me and asked for your room number 

Victor sits up so fast his head thunks against the protruding ridge of the headboard. Yuuri is looking for him. _Yuuri is looking for him_. And Victor is sitting there in nothing but his underwear with a terrible case of bedhead and huge bags under his eyes.

He types out, with shaky fingers:

> I AM NOT PRESENTABLE CHRIS 
> 
> YOU HAVE TO STALL HIM 

He leaps to his feet, runs to the bathroom and starts the shower running. He does a quick once-over in the mirror: God, he looks _haggard_. His phone chimes in his hand and he checks it.

> I can buy you ten minutes. Make the most of it 

Ten minutes! He has to triage. There’s not enough time for his normal hair and skincare routines, so he’ll have to abbreviate them. He’ll wash his hair, let it air dry while he puts concealer on the dark circles under his eyes, and then blow-dry and style as best he can. And then he’ll get dressed. Getting dressed is his lowest priority. If Yuuri shows up early, he’ll just answer the door in his towel. It’s not ideal, but it’s definitely in line with the message he wants to convey.

 

***

 

“Thank you for being so patient,” Chris says, unzipping his suitcase. “I can’t imagine where I put that lip balm he loaned me. Victor will _kill_ me if I leave without giving it back. I think it costs more per gram than gold.”

“Of—of course,” Yuuri says. He shifts his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. Chris had very graciously given Yuuri Victor’s hotel room number—and then called him back twenty seconds later, asking if Yuuri could deliver something to Victor on Chris’s behalf. If someone had told Yuuri five years ago that he would one day willingly enter Chris Giacometti’s hotel room, alone and unsupervised, he probably would’ve had a heart attack. But after years of knowing him, Yuuri has mostly gotten used to the way Chris buzzes around him like a sexually provocative fly, startling but harmless.

“Hmm,” Chris says to himself, rummaging through his clothes. “I know it’s here somewhere. Why don’t you have a seat, Yuuri? This may take a few minutes.”

Yuuri sits down on the edge of Chris’s bed. There’s only one king-sized bed in his room, compared to the two twins in Yuuri’s. “You aren’t rooming with anyone this year?” Yuuri asks.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Chris says, rummaging around through his clothes. “I had an adorable Czech choreographer over for a post-banquet rendezvous last night.” Chris looks over at Yuuri, his lips pursued thoughtfully. “Actually, darling, maybe don’t sit on the bed.”

It’s only thanks to a lifetime of hospitality-industry politeness that Yuuri doesn’t leap three feet into the air. Chris clears a pile of clothes off a desk chair and Yuuri resettles himself, his face burning. “Actually, it’s thanks to you that Tomas and I had such a lovely time together,” Chris says. “After our pole routine last night, he came right over and chatted me up.”

“Oh God,” Yuuri says faintly.

“You and I should make it a tradition!” Chris says, searching through another one of his suitcases. “What’s the next banquet we’ll be together at, Worlds? You bring the stereo, I’ll bring the pole.”

“I’m never going to another banquet again,” Yuuri says fervently.

“I suppose it doesn’t have to be a banquet,” Chris says. “We could stick a pole on the Zamboni and do it during the gala.”

Chris goes into the bathroom and starts making a ruckus as he searches through his toiletries, and Yuuri buries his face in his hands. His stomach is already roiling with nerves at the prospect of facing Victor, and the reminder that he had stripped down in front of him and _pole-danced_ is only making it worse.

Chris mutters to himself in French for several minutes, but when he reemerges from the bathroom, he’s empty-handed. “Yuuri,” Chris says chidingly when he sees Yuuri hunched over. “Why do you look so anxious? You’re having breakfast with Victor, not going to the guillotine.”

“I’m not having breakfast with him,” Yuuri says, as Chris unzips a suitcase Yuuri’s pretty sure he already checked. “I told you before, I have to return something to him.”

“Hmm,” Chris says. “If it’s his heart, I don’t think he wants it back.”

Yuuri is far too agitated to try and make sense of Chris’s innuendos. “It’s his tie,” Yuuri says, pulling the carefully folded cloth from his pocket. “I left mine at the banquet, and I got upset about it, so he gave me his.” A wave of misery washes over Yuuri as he turns the blue silk over in his hands. “He’s so _nice._ _”_

“And clever,” Chris says. “He left you a glass slipper so you’d have to come find him again. Ah!”

Chris triumphantly digs a small pot of lip balm out of the inside pocket of his suitcase. “Here we are,” he says with satisfaction. “And it only took me, what, eight minutes?” He checks his watch. “Nine. Perfect.”

Yuuri can only understand about a third of what Chris is saying at this point. He puts the tie back in one pocket and the lip balm in the other. “Okay,” he says, more to himself than Chris. “Okay. I’m going to go.”

Chris clasps his shoulder. “Walk slowly.”

Yuuri goes to the elevator and up two floors, then walks the long hall until he reaches Victor’s room. His heart is thrashing painfully in his chest. He’ll be fine, he tries to tell himself. He doesn’t have to make a big production out of it. He’ll knock, say he’s sorry, hand over the contents of his pockets, and _run._ Hopefully by Worlds, Victor will have forgotten all about it.

He throws his hand out and knocks on the door before he can talk himself out of it. He hears rustling, footsteps, and then the door clicks open. And when Victor appears in the doorway, Yuuri’s tongue goes thick in his mouth. It’s only 8:30 in the morning and Victor looks like a million dollars: his hair full of body, his skin glowing, the top three buttons of his dress shirt casually undone. Oh God—they’re casually undone because _he doesn_ _’t have a tie._

“Yuuri!” Victor exclaims. “What a nice surprise!”

A quiet shiver goes down Yuuri’s spine at the sound of his name in Victor’s mouth. It’s beautiful, and the circumstances under which Yuuri’s hearing it couldn’t be worse. “Hello,” Yuuri says weakly. He fumbles around in his pocket and produces the folded blue silk. “Um, I just wanted to say that I’m very sorry for being such trouble to you last night. Thank you for taking care of me.” He thrusts the tie out at Victor. “I wanted to make sure you got this back.”

Victor glances down at it. “What, you don’t like it?” he asks with a smile. “I gave it to you.”

In the agitated mental flow chart Yuuri had made before arriving, he hadn’t considered a scenario where Victor wouldn’t take the tie back. “Um,” Yuuri says.

“Oh!” Victor says. “Actually, I was thinking about it, and—hold on.” He disappears for a second into his room, then reemerges with something blue in his hand. “Here. That’s the matching pocket square.”

Yuuri stares at the blue cloth in Victor’s hand with growing alarm. He hadn’t even _conceived_ of a scenario where Victor tried to give him something else. “No, I can’t,” Yuuri says. “It’s very kind of you, but—”

“Yuuri, you can’t have one without the other,” Victor says, perfectly reasonable. “They’re a matched set!” He sets the pocket square on top of the tie in Yuuri’s outstretched hand, and Yuuri instinctively closes his hand around it, and now he has _two_ pieces of Victor Nikiforov’s old clothing. Is he still drunk, somehow? He drank a _lot_ last night—is this all some massive hallucination?

Victor takes a step forward into the hallway. Normally Yuuri’s reaction would be to immediately leap back six meters, but as Victor moves he brings with him a waft of that scent: _his_ scent, the one still lingering on the silk tie, the one that filled Yuuri’s nose while he napped on Victor’s shoulder the previous night. It transfixes Yuuri for a moment, just long enough for Victor to come in close and take Yuuri’s face in his hands.

Now Yuuri is frozen in absolute disbelief. Why is Victor touching his face? Why is Victor touching his face _like that_ , the way people do in movies right before they kiss? He looks up at Victor with eyes that must be screaming _what is happening_ , but Victor isn’t looking at his eyes: he’s looking right below them. “Are you wearing concealer?” Victor asks, sounding genuinely curious.

Yuuri blinks at him. “...No?”

Victor looks pained. “Yuuri,” he complains, smoothing his thumb along the tender skin underneath Yuuri's right eye. “How do you look so good the morning after a bender?”

“I...don’t?”

“You _do_ ,” Victor says. “I only had two glasses of champagne and I had to use half a tube to get my dark circles under control.”

He angles his eyes upward, and...actually, from this close-up, Yuuri _can_ see the faint difference in texture between his cheeks and the skin under his eyes. Yuuri has the sudden insane urge to reach up and touch it with his finger, an urge that is fortunately thwarted by Victor letting go of Yuuri’s face and taking him by the hand instead. “Anyway, why are we standing out here in the hall?” Victor says cheerfully. “Come in, come in!”

And just like that, Yuuri is in Victor Nikiforov’s hotel room. Yuuri looks around in silent, bewildered awe. There’s Victor’s suitcase, its lid open, the contents messy. There’s his hairbrush, sitting on a nearby table. There’s his _toothbrush_ , sticking out of a black toiletries bag. “Excuse the mess,” Victor says, sweeping up the bag and hairbrush and tucking them into his suitcase. “I was just getting dressed when you knocked.”

A cold horror sweeps through Yuuri. He’d been so focused on returning the tie and ending this incredibly awkward chapter of his life that he’d just barged in on Victor, without a thought to what Victor might be doing. “I’m sorry,” Yuuri says. “I shouldn’t have just shown up here without any warning.”

“No, it’s fine!” Victor says, zipping his suitcase shut. “I was going to come and see you anyway. You saved me the trip.”

Yuuri’s brain stutters momentarily. “You were going to come see me?”

“Of course!” Victor says. “I didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye last night. Your coach shuffled me out of the room pretty quickly. Here, have a seat.”

Victor’s hotel room is noticeably larger than Yuuri’s; it has enough space for a square dining table and four chairs. Yuuri sits down at the table, Victor’s tie and pocket square still clutched in his hand. He’s not sure what to do with them. Putting them in his pocket means he’s accepting them, which he _can_ _’t_ , but setting them down on the table seems rude, like he’s scorning them. So he just holds them awkwardly as he watches Victor go over to the nightstand and pick up the hotel’s room service menu. “Have you had breakfast yet?” Victor asks.

“No.”

“Do you want to order something? I’m starving.”

Yuuri vaguely tries to assess the state of his nausea. His anxiety isn’t helping it, that’s for sure. “I’m not sure what my stomach thinks of food right now.”

“Ah,” Victor says. “Well, maybe I’ll order a few things, and you can see how you feel when they get here? If there’s leftovers, I’m sure Yura will eat them.”

“Yura?”

“Angry Yuri,” Victor says. “The one you beat at breakdancing last night. I’m sure he’ll be by to yell at me at some point.”

Yuuri would really rather not be around if he does. Last night he had taken a lot of satisfaction in besting Yuri, but now that he’s sober, all he can feel is embarrassment at letting a teenager get under his skin so badly. “Why is he going to yell at you?” Yuuri asks.

“Oh, he doesn’t need a reason,” Victor says. “He’s never learned how to be friendly, so stopping by to pick a fight is just his way of being sociable.”

_Sociable_ hadn’t been the vibe Yuuri got when Yuri cornered him in that bathroom. “He found me after my free skate and yelled at me,” Yuuri says. “I’d never even spoken to him before.”

Victor looks surprised. “What did he say?”

“That we don’t need two Yuris in Men’s Seniors, and I should just retire.”

Victor laughs. “He tells me to retire all the time, too,” he says. “He might feel a little threatened by you.”

Yuuri can’t stop the bitterness that infects his voice. “I doubt it.”

Victor looks over at him, and for a second Yuuri can feel the weight of his curiosity. He probably wants to ask why Yuuri’s free skate went so horribly wrong. But then he looks back down at the menu in his hands and picks up the phone receiver from the nightstand. “So,” Victor says. “Should we start with some mimosas?”

Yuuri grimaces involuntarily, and Victor looks up, grinning. “I’m just kidding,” he says. “Omelets, maybe?”

Someone on the other end of the line picks up, and Victor starts speaking in brisk Russian. Yuuri watches him, his head buzzing. He still can’t quite comprehend the situation he’s found himself in. Although—this is what Chris said would happen, wasn’t it? _You_ _’re having breakfast with Victor, not going to the guillotine._

Yuuri startles. In the confusion of the moment, he’d forgotten about the lip balm still tucked into his pocket. He sets Victor’s tie and pocket square down on the table and digs it out. When Victor hangs up the phone and comes over to sit down at the table, Yuuri thrusts it out at him. “I asked Chris for your room number,” he says. Hearing himself say it out loud makes him realize how enormously presumptuous it was. “He asked me to give this back to you. He said you loaned it to him.”

Victor takes the little container from him. “Yes, thank you,” Victor says, peering at the label. Yuuri wonders how many different kinds of lip balm he carries around, if he can’t remember which one he loaned out. Victor unscrews the top, swipes a finger inside, and applies a thin layer to his lips. “Oh!” he says, sounding almost surprised. “This is the expensive kind.” He proffers the little pot to Yuuri. “Try it, it’s like liquid satin.”

Russians must not have any cultural baggage around the concept of an _indirect kiss._ “Ah, that’s all right,” Yuuri says, his face getting a little warm. “We’re going to be eating soon.”

Victor screws the lid back on and tucks the lip balm into his pocket. He looks down at the table where Yuuri’s set the tie and pocket square, and Yuuri was right: it feels rude to have just set them down there, like they’re unwanted. Yuuri picks them up and decides to try one more time. “Really, Victor,” he says. “It’s not right for you to give these up just because I was drunk and careless.”

Victor reaches across the table, and for a second Yuuri thinks he’s going to take his items back. But Victor just folds Yuuri’s hands shut over them. “Yuuri,” Victor says, his face turning serious. “I’m going to be absolutely candid with you. Your old tie was ugly.”

Yuuri stares at him. “What?”

“I know you were attached to it,” Victor says, “but the shade was all wrong for your complexion. Losing it was a blessing in disguise.” Victor leans back in his seat and gives Yuuri an assessing look. “If I were your personal stylist, I’d keep you in the range from navy blue to right around cornflower. Anything lighter than that and it makes you look washed out.”

Yuuri has absolutely no idea how to respond to any of that. So he says the first thing that pops into his head: “I don’t know what cornflower looks like.”

Victor immediately takes out his cell phone. “I’ll show you! It’s still pretty light, so it’s not like you have to—”

Sudden noise bursts from Victor’s phone. Both of them jump in their seats, startled. It’s the loud, grainy sound of applause and cheering, and then, inexplicably, what sounds like the opening synth chords of the song Yuuri used for his exhibition program last year. Victor fumbles with his phone until he’s silenced it, and then he looks up at Yuuri with an expression that seems almost guilty.

“What was that?” Yuuri asks, bewildered.

“Um,” Victor says. “It was just a video I was going to watch, before you got here.”

Suspicion tickles the back of Yuuri’s mind. “A video of what?”

Victor presses his lips together for a second. “Um,” he says. “Your exhibition program from last year?”

His face has gone slightly pink. Yuuri is momentarily distracted by the sight of it: Victor is _blushing_. Has Yuuri ever seen Victor blush like that in interviews or pictures? He’s seen Victor flushed with exertion after a program, or flushed with excitement as he stands on a podium, but in a decade of looking at Victor through camera lenses, Yuuri isn’t sure he’s ever seen that particular shade of pink illuminating his face before.

It’s that blush that finally starts to shake Yuuri out of his anxious tunnel vision. He’s gotten something wrong here. Nothing is happening the way he thought it would. He’s been operating under the assumption that Victor is being kind—not wanting Yuuri to feel bad after his embarrassing display last night. But this is something else. Victor keeps offering him things: food, lip balm, a non-ugly tie. Victor keeps touching Yuuri’s face and hands. Victor had been about to watch one of Yuuri’s _exhibition programs,_ of all things: not one of Yuuri’s notable performances, but that dumb pop song that Phichit had basically dared Yuuri to perform last year.

Victor isn’t just being nice. Victor is taking an interest in him.

Victor is being _friendly_.

Yuuri hadn’t come prepared for this at all.

 

***

 

Victor doesn’t embarrass easily, but the look of incredulity on Yuuri’s face when he hears the sound of his own exhibition skate coming from Victor’s phone sends a guilty twinge through him. It was much easier to stretch the definition of _good skate_ when he was alone under the covers and only had to justify it to himself. Now Yuuri’s going to think Victor can’t even keep a promise for ten hours. “Okay, Yuuri, don’t be mad,” Victor says. “I didn’t break my promise. I really have only been watching your good skates.”

Yuuri’s expression shifts from incredulity to shock. “How many of my programs have you watched?”

Victor thinks about it. “Ten? Twelve?”

The color actually drains from Yuuri’s face. Victor starts to think he might be in more trouble than he anticipated. “Yuuri, I _promise_ ,” he says. “I only watched the good ones!”

Yuuri sputters silently for a moment. “How can you know they’re _good_ before you’ve even watched them?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Victor says. “If you medaled at a competition with it, or if it was a new personal best, or a season’s best, or—”

“You can’t say something’s good just because it’s a season’s best!” Yuuri exclaims. “That just means it wasn’t as bad as all the other ones! It could still be _bad._ ”

When Yuuri first arrived at Victor’s door, he’d been flustered and apologetic and oddly shy—all his bravado and confidence seemed to have left his system along with the alcohol. But now some of that illuminating fire is back inside him. “Yuuri, you can’t honestly tell me you’ve had a season where even your season’s bests were bad,” Victor says.

“My second year in Seniors was.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” Victor says. “ _Cloud to Raindrop_ was your best free skate out of all the ones I watched.”

Yuuri blinks at him. Then, without a word, he drops his head down onto his arms on the table.

“Yuuri?” Victor asks, a little taken aback. He can’t see Yuuri’s face anymore, just his rumpled black hair. The urge to reach out and ruffle his hand through it possesses Victor so strongly that he actually lifts his arm off the table before he manages to restrain himself. “What are you—”

_“Why_ were you watching my programs?” Yuuri says into his sleeves.

Victor takes a second to actually think before answering. He dismisses all the instinctive answers: _because I like you, because I think you_ _’re cute, because I want to know everything about you._ “You have such an interesting collection of dance proficiencies,” he says at last. “It made me curious about how you integrated them all into your programs.”

Yuuri groans. “Plus, you said you wanted me to be your coach,” Victor says. “I should be allowed to see what I’m working with, right?”

Yuuri’s head flies up. His expression is pure alarm. “I said that?”

“You don’t remember?” Victor says. “It was supposed to be your reward for beating Chris at pole-dancing. Which I didn’t think you’d be able to do, by the way. I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“I can’t believe I—” Yuuri cuts himself off. He squares his shoulders and gives Victor a surprisingly intense look. “I’m sorry I said something so presumptuous.”

“I’d never really thought about what it might be like to coach,” Victor says musingly. “I’ve always been a little superstitious when it comes to thinking about what I’ll do after I retire.”

“Then I _really_ shouldn’t have said it,” Yuuri says fervently.

“I suppose now’s the time to start thinking about it, though,” Victor says. He throws his head back and sighs theatrically. “I'm going to be _twenty-seven_ in two weeks.”

“That doesn’t mean anything!” Yuuri says. “Your skating is just as strong as it's ever been. And _Stammi vicino_ is one of the best programs you've ever done.”

The compliment sends an unexpected pang through Victor. “You really think so?”

Yuuri nods. “It hasn’t gotten the reception I wanted,” Victor confesses. “Some people have been calling it inauthentic.”

“That’s stupid,” Yuuri says. “It has an incredible depth of feeling.”

He says it with such conviction that it’s easy to believe he’s right. On the other hand, after watching ten or twelve of Yuuri’s videos, Victor also suspects he’s not exactly an impartial judge. “Yuuri,” he says, leaning forward, a little conspiratorial. “Am I right in guessing you’re a fan of mine?”

All the color that had vanished from Yuuri's face suddenly floods back, full-force. “Y-yes,” he says. “Of course I am.”

“I thought so,” Victor says, satisfied. “I could see it in your skating. That might be why I like _Cloud to Raindrop_ so much—so many of the choices you made were ones I would’ve made, too. Why are you so dissatisfied with it?”

“It’s not that I’m—dissatisfied with it,” Yuuri says. “It just didn’t get the reception I wanted, either. People said it didn’t suit me.”

_“That’s_ stupid,” Victor says. “It captured your sense of musicality better than anything else I’ve seen you do. It’s the most _you_ program of them all.”

Yuuri looks down at the table. “I mean,” he says. “You don’t really know me.”

“Yuuri!” Victor exclaims, almost offended. “I held you half-naked in my arms! Doesn't that count for anything?”

Yuuri groans and flops his head back down on his folded arms. Now all Victor can see is his rumpled black hair and the tips of his ears, glowing red with embarrassment. The urge to ruffle Yuuri’s hair comes back so strongly that Victor actually leans forward to do it this time, but he’s interrupted mid-reach by a polite knock at the door. “Oh, that must be our food!” Victor exclaims, jumping up. “It can’t be Yura, he’d never knock so quietly.”

Sure enough, a hotel attendant is waiting outside with their breakfast: a pair of omelets and some fruit salad. It’s disappointingly basic, but it seemed like the safest choice for a pair of hungover athletes with National Championships coming up in a few weeks. Yuuri lifts his head off his arms to look at the omelet placed in front of him, and he gets a glimmer in his eyes. “Okay, I _am_ hungry,” he admits.

Victor feels an odd sort of pride as Yuuri picks up his fork, as if he'd been the one to prepare it and not just the one to pick up the phone. The two of them start eating. “I can’t believe it got here this fast,” Yuuri says.

“I may have name-dropped myself when I made the call,” Victor admits.

Yuuri looks a little rueful. “Must be nice.”

“You don’t get the VIP treatment when you’re in Japan?” Victor asks, surprised.

“Not really.”

That doesn’t seem right at all. Yuuri’s been the top male skater in Japan for at least two years now. “Are you just being modest?” Victor asks. “Yuuri, I refuse to believe you're not hounded by paparazzi day and night, all trying to get a picture of your beautiful face.”

“Oh my God,” Yuuri mumbles around his fork. He chews and swallows awkwardly. “That’s not—I mean, I’m barely ever in Japan anyway. I train in America, and no one knows who I am there.”

“Ah, you train in Detroit, right?”

Yuuri looks at him suspiciously. “Yes. How did you know that?”

“It was on your Wikipedia page,” Victor says. “And then your hometown is...Hatsu?”

That earns a low laugh from Yuuri. “Hasetsu.”

“What’s it like?”

Yuuri thinks for a moment. “Quiet,” he says. “It’s not small, but it’s not busy. At least, that’s what it was like when I was there. I haven’t—”

He gets an odd look on his face and falls silent. “Haven’t what?” Victor asks.

“I haven’t been there in a while.”

For some reason, the atmosphere in the room subtly changes. Yuuri is looking down at his plate, his fork loosely gripped in his hand, and his attention has moved away from Victor and is focused on something inside himself instead. Victor takes a few uneasy bites of his omelet, waiting for him to come back. When Yuuri finally lifts his head again, his expression is troubled. “Are you all right?” Victor asks.

“No,” Yuuri says. He might not have intended to be so blunt, because a look of surprise springs to his face. “I mean—I’m fine. It’s just—” He exhales. “It’s been a bad couple of days.”

So far neither of them has brought up Yuuri’s disastrous free skate. “Well, it hasn’t been all bad, has it?” Victor says, a little cautiously. “You and I had fun last night. And your short program went wonderfully.”

Yuuri looks back down at his plate and doesn’t say anything. Victor mentally kicks himself for even venturing that close to the subject. He tries to think of something else to say, something to salvage the conversation, but he’s at a loss. Finally Yuuri looks back up again, his jaw set tightly. “I had some bad news from home in the middle of the competition,” Yuuri says. “It kind of—cast a shadow over everything.”

Oh. Not a secret injury, then. “Yuuri, I’m so sorry,” Victor says. “Is it something where you need to go home right away? I know you have Nationals in a few weeks—”

“Going home wouldn’t change anything,” Yuuri says. There’s a faint bitterness in his voice. “Maybe it would have before, but not now.”

Victor isn’t sure how to respond. He doesn’t want to pry—well, he _does_ want to pry, but he _shouldn_ _’t_ —and he doesn’t trust himself not to blunder into some conversational landmine. So he doesn’t say anything, and after the silence stretches on long enough, Yuuri seems compelled to break it. “I haven’t been home in almost five years,” he says. “Partly because it’s expensive to travel, but also because...I didn’t want to go back until I had actually accomplished something in my career. My family gives me so much support, and I didn’t want to come back until I had proof that I wasn’t wasting it.”

Victor almost wants to ask what he means by _accomplished something—_ is being a two-time Japanese national champion somehow not an accomplishment?—but he just nods.

“But—” Yuuri takes a hard breath. “When I moved away, I had to leave my dog behind with my family. And _he_ didn’t know I was staying away because I thought I had to prove something first. He just knew I wasn’t there.” Yuuri looks down at the table. “And...I took too long. He died.”

The unexpected bluntness of it sends an ache through Victor’s chest. Maybe it’s the tight, painful way Yuuri is looking down at the table; maybe it’s the memory of Makkachin’s last vet appointment, filling out a form with that ever-increasing, double-digit number of her age. “Oh, Yuuri,” he says softly. “I’m sorry.”

Yuuri nods. He doesn’t look up. “What—” Victor starts to ask, then hesitates. Maybe asking questions is a bad idea. “What was his name?”

Yuuri makes a strange little huffing sound. “I was afraid you were going to ask me that,” he says ruefully. He glances up at Victor, his face a little red. “We called him Vicchan.”

“Oh,” Victor says, surprised. “That’s what Oda Nobunari always calls me.”

Yuuri nods. “It’s, um, a familiar way of saying _Victor_.” He reaches into his pocket, takes out his phone, and unlocks it. “When I was twelve, I saw an article where you were talking about the poodle you had just gotten, and I told my parents I wanted one, too.” He taps at the screen. “They didn’t think we could handle a standard poodle, so they let me get a toy poodle instead.” The red cast on his face deepens. “And since, um, you inspired me to get him, I named him Victor.”

He reaches over and sets his phone down on the table in front of Victor. It’s a picture of Yuuri, looking very young, and a small, excitable-looking poodle that reminds Victor so strongly of Makkachin as a puppy that his chest aches again. This isn’t the first time someone’s told him they got a poodle after hearing Victor talk about Makkachin, but it’s the first time anyone’s made the tribute so direct. Victor looks at his little namesake, frozen happily in time with Yuuri, and says without thinking, “I wish I could have met him.”

Yuuri makes an odd, hiccupy sound. “Yeah, that would’ve been nice,” he says.

Victor looks up. Yuuri isn’t looking at him, but even with his gaze angled downward, Victor can see the tears standing in his eyes. Yuuri takes his glasses off to wipe them away, and it sends a bolt of panic through Victor. Oh God, he’s made Yuuri _cry_. He couldn’t just leave well enough alone and change the subject when Yuuri started acting sad, and now Yuuri’s crying and Victor has no idea what to do. He never knows what to do when people start crying in front of him. Sometimes during photo ops, his fans will cry when they meet him, and he always vacillates between pretending not to notice and trying to be lighthearted about it. The intensity of their emotion always makes him feel awkward.

But Yuuri’s not crying over _Victor_ , he’s crying over his dog. Victor can relate to that. Victor rarely cries, but when he does, it’s usually because he’s worried about Makkachin. What would Yakov do, in a situation like this? When Victor’s truly upset, Yakov talks to Victor gently—well, gently for Yakov, anyway—and he usually tries to comfort him somehow. He’ll sit close to him, pat him on the back, hug him.

Only Yuuri is inconveniently sitting in a chair across from Victor where Victor can’t really reach him. With a decisiveness born of panic, Victor pushes his own chair back and stands up. Yuuri looks up at him, startled. “Yuuri,” Victor says firmly, “stand up.”

Yuuri hesitates, obviously thrown off-guard. Then he stands, and as soon as he’s upright, Victor moves forward and claps his arms around him in a tight hug.

“Oh,” Yuuri says into Victor’s shoulder, an odd note in his voice. Then, unexpectedly, he gives a wobbly laugh. “Victor, what are you doing?”

“This is what my coach does whenever I’m upset about something.”

“He makes you stand up so he can hug you?”

“Yes,” Victor says staunchly. He can still hear the residue of tears in Yuuri’s tone, but there’s also a dubiousness that makes Victor think he miscalculated something somewhere. Yuuri isn’t participating in the hug at all: he’s just standing there with his arms at his sides while Victor holds onto him. Oh God, did Victor just end up making this twenty times more awkward than it already was?

Then he feels Yuuri shift his weight a little—not away from Victor, but towards him. Two tentative hands touch Victor’s back, not quite returning the hug, but holding Victor there, keeping him from moving away. Warm relief fills Victor as the rigidness in Yuuri slowly starts to melt away, until the two of them are form-fit to one another, just like they were last night when they danced at the banquet. Victor feels distantly guilty at how good it feels to have Yuuri in his arms, when the circumstances around it are so sad.

“I just—” Yuuri’s voice is quiet against Victor’s shoulder. “I feel like I don’t have a right to feel this sad about it. I’m the one who chose not to go back home. I’m the one who decided my skating career was more important than being with him.”

“Yuuri, you’re not a robot,” Victor says. “Of course you have a right to feel sad.” He thinks of Makkachin back in St. Petersburg, of all the weeks she ends up spending with her dogsitter instead of him, and he swallows. “We all have to make hard choices in this sport.”

He feels the tiny motion of Yuuri’s nod. “And most of the time it’s worth it,” Victor says. “Right?”

Yuuri hesitates. “Most of the time,” he echoes. “But right now...it feels like I don’t have very much to show for it.”

There it is again: that strange minimizing of his own accomplishments. Yuuri is clearly the kind of athlete whose ambitions leave him perpetually dissatisfied: downplaying his national awards because he wants international ones, deflecting praise of his old programs when his new ones aren’t up to snuff. He doesn’t take pleasure in remembered victories at all. The only thing that will satisfy him is trying harder and winning more.

_And wouldn_ _’t it be exciting to see him do it?_ a little voice whispers in the back of Victor’s mind. After watching a dozen of Yuuri’s programs, Victor can see all the places where Yuuri needs support: better choreography, for starters, taking advantage of his strong background in dance. And while his jumps are the weakest part of his skillset, Yuuri could definitely be wringing more points out of them if he backloaded his programs more. After watching him effortlessly out-dance both Yuri Plisetsky and Christophe Giacometti last night, Victor is positive Celestino is not taking enough advantage of Yuuri’s considerable stamina.

It’s exciting to think about what Yuuri could do with the right program in his arsenal. And honestly, when was the last time Victor felt genuinely _excited_ about choreographing something? Putting together his programs this season had felt like pulling teeth; every year it’s gotten harder to figure out what he can do with himself that he hasn’t already done before. But if he were making something for Yuuri—

A loud buzzing noise comes from the table. They both look over: Yuuri’s phone screen is lit up with a text message. Victor feels Yuuri start to pull away from him, and for a second he feels the childish urge to squeeze him tighter, to make him stay. But he doesn’t, of course. He lets Yuuri separate himself back into a solitary figure and go over to pick up his phone. “It’s my coach,” Yuuri says, reading the screen. “He’s just reminding me that we check out at ten.”

“Well—” Victor feels a little alarmed. “That doesn’t mean you have to leave right now, does it? You haven’t even finished your breakfast!”

Yuuri smiles. His eyes are still a little red, but at least he’s no longer crying. “Yeah,” he says. “I can stay a little while longer.”

So the two of them sit back down and return to eating. Yuuri settles his glasses back onto his face, and with it he seems to settle down into himself a little more. He’s still a good deal more reserved than he was the night before, but doesn’t seem as anxious as he was when he first arrived. Victor notices his tie and pocket square are still sitting on the table next to Yuuri’s elbow, and he decides to take the opportunity to finally show Yuuri what cornflower blue looks like. Yuuri peers at the image on Victor’s phone. “That’s basically the same color as my old tie, isn’t it?” he asks.

_“Yuuri,”_ Victor says despairingly, and is rewarded with his first glimpse of what Yuuri Katsuki looks like when he’s annoyed. It’s delightful. “Your old tie was practically _periwinkle_. Here, I’m sure you’re wearing it in one of these pictures.”

He opens up the gallery of photos from the banquet last night and picks one of the ones where Yuuri is dancing with Chris and wearing basically nothing _but_ the tie. He holds it out for Yuuri to see. Yuuri looks at it and almost chokes on his bite of omelet. “Oh my God, there are _photos_ of that?” he says, his voice rising with alarm.

“Oh,” Victor says. “Um.”

Yuuri reaches out and starts swiping through the gallery. “Oh God,” he says with dismay. “Of _course_ there are photos. I can’t _believe_ I—” He snatches up his own phone from the table and starts tapping at it. “No one’s posted any of them, have they?” he asks. Then, more to himself than to Victor: “No, Phichit would’ve seen it. He would’ve texted me.”

The name rings a faint bell. “Who’s Phichit?” Victor asks.

“My roommate,” Yuuri says. “He’s another one of Celestino’s skaters. He’s addicted to social media, he’d be the first to find out if anyone posted anything.”

Victor thinks he remembers a skater by that name from Four Continents last year. Cute, cheerful, high energy. His stomach gives an unexpected lurch. He knows he shouldn’t ask, but he also knows it’ll drive him crazy if he doesn’t: “Are you two dating?”

_“What?”_ Yuuri says, glancing up from his phone. “No, it’s not like that! He’s my friend, we’re just—because we’re both skating for Celestino—”

“Oh, I see,” Victor says, trying not to sound too relieved. “Well, I’m sure you’re right that he’d be the first to know. But I don’t think you have to worry, Yuuri. Everyone who was there last night knows better than to post things like that online.”

“What about Yuri Plisetsky?”

Okay, he has a point there. “Yura might be tempted,” Victor concedes, “but he knows there are pictures of him losing to you at that dance-off. He wouldn’t risk people finding out he went up against you and lost.”

Victor says it convincingly enough that Yuuri’s shoulders relax a little. “And I certainly won’t post anything if you don’t want me to,” Victor says. “But I don’t think there’s anything embarrassing about the ones of us dancing, is there? I think they came out very nice.”

He finds one of the pictures of him and Yuuri together and holds it out for Yuuri to see. Yuuri leans in and looks. His face softens. “It’s not that it’s embarrassing,” he says after a moment. “But—I did so badly on my free skate. I don’t want people to think I’m being frivolous and not taking it seriously.”

“Ah,” Victor says. “That makes sense.” A thought occurs to him. “Is that why you didn't want to take a picture with me after the competition? I guess I offered it a little lightly.”

Yuuri flushes. “That's—I'm sorry,” he says. “That was rude of me. I just...” He hesitates. “I hadn’t earned it.”

Victor really doesn’t understand all the little rules Yuuri’s constructed around his success. “Well, if you don’t want me to post the pictures of us dancing, I think _I_ _’ve_ earned a new picture with you,” he says. “Here, take a selfie with me!”

For a second Yuuri looks like he wants to protest, but when Victor stands up, he stands up too. Victor puts his arm around Yuuri and pulls him in close—which he _has_ to do, in order to take the picture. The happy warmth that fills him every time he touches Yuuri is just a coincidental bonus. “Now, what kind of picture do you want this to be?” Victor asks, holding his phone at arm’s length. “If you’re worried about seeming frivolous, I can frown and look somber.”

Yuuri’s reflected image on the phone screen smiles a little. “No,” he says. “Just be yourself.”

That’s a more complicated request than Yuuri realizes—after almost two decades in the public eye, Victor is an instinctive chameleon, perfectly adapting himself to every situation he finds himself in. But if Yuuri wants Victor to show what he’s truly feeling in that moment, that’s easy, because what Victor’s feeling is happy to be with Yuuri. Victor tucks his face close to Yuuri’s and smiles.

The picture turns out sweet, even though Yuuri’s own smile is a little shyer and more tentative than Victor expected. “You want a copy of it too, right?” Victor says. Then, with a flash of inspiration: “What’s your phone number?”

So Victor gets both Yuuri’s phone number and the name of his Instagram account, which, when he surreptitiously glances at it, is disappointingly sparse. Yuuri only posts in the lead up to competitions; his last photo is a picture of him on the podium at the NHK Trophy with the message _Thank you for your support as I head to the Grand Prix Final!_

“Do you think you’ll post about what happened?” Victor asks. “With Vicchan?”

Yuuri looks surprised. “No,” he says. “I wouldn’t want people to think I’m using what happened as an excuse.”

“Well,” Victor says. “I wouldn’t use a word like _excuse._ But it was a reason, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but—” Yuuri seems momentarily at a loss. “People would feel sorry for me. That’s not what I want.”

“Well, it’s your choice, of course,” Victor says. “But he was important to you. You shouldn’t have to keep quiet about that.”

Yuuri doesn’t look convinced, so Victor decides not to push it further. He sends a copy of the selfie he took to Yuuri, and when Yuuri’s phone buzzes with its arrival, he looks at it and smiles in a way that fills Victor’s stomach with more of that happy warmth. Then, almost immediately, Yuuri’s phone buzzes again, and his smile fades. “Oh,” Yuuri says. “It’s my coach again. He needs me to come back and finish packing up before we check out.”

Victor’s spirits sink. Once Yuuri walks out the door, they aren’t going to see each other again until Worlds, nearly four months from now. Usually the competition season blasts by Victor in a rush of practice and training and travel, but right now it seems like a yawning eternity. “Of course,” Victor says, trying to keep his voice light.

Yuuri tucks his phone back into his pocket, then looks at the tie and pocket square still sitting on the table. He looks over at Victor. “You really want me to take these?” he says, a little despairing.

“Yes,” Victor says firmly, picking them up and pressing them into his hands. “Your fanbase will thank me.”

Yuuri tucks them into his pockets, too. Once he’s empty-handed, he stands there for a moment, looking at Victor with a hesitance that Victor chooses to interpret as longing. Victor walks forward and hugs him again. This time Yuuri only takes a few seconds to react to it: he lifts his arms and wraps them around Victor, too.

And it’s odd, that something can feel so good at the same time Victor’s heart is starting to ache again. “I wish we had more time together,” Victor says. “But you’ll keep in touch with me, right?”

“If—if you want me to.”

“Of course I do!” Victor says. “Will you text me when your plane lands, so I know you got home okay?”

“Okay.”

The promise lessens the ache a little bit. Victor holds onto Yuuri for another few seconds, acutely aware of the moment when the length of the hug is about to tip over into awkward, and once it arrives there’s nothing to do but let go of him. He watches as Yuuri walks over to the door, opens it, and looks back with that tentative smile again. “Bye,” he says.

“Bye,” Victor says. It’s only thanks to years of practice that he can smile when he says it.

And then Yuuri’s gone, and Victor’s left alone in the room with the memory of Yuuri’s touch still lingering on his skin. He fixes the feeling in his mind. Yuuri’s gone, but at least he has a mental catalog of his touch to refer to now: his arms wrapped around Victor, the weight of his head on Victor’s shoulder, his breath brushing against Victor’s ear. 

It’s not enough, but it’s better than nothing.

***


	2. The Road to Nationals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to my wonderful artist [izzyisozaki](https://twitter.com/izzyisozaki) for her amazing artwork this chapter!

The trip from Sochi back to Detroit takes three planes and over sixteen hours, and Yuuri spends most of that time trying to make sense of the last forty-eight hours of his life.

Celestino, thankfully, has trained himself to sleep through plane trips, so Yuuri is able to avoid the uncomfortable talk he knows is on the horizon about the future of his career. Yuuri doesn’t want to make any decisions about his future until he can set everything straight in his mind. It’s not as if he’d made up his mind to retire after his awful free skate, but he’d probably been closer to considering it than at any other point in his career. And now...

Now Victor Nikiforov will be mad at him if he retires. Yuuri had only just checked out of the hotel when he got a barrage of text messages from Victor, friendly and familiar, as if he were just continuing the conversation they’d been having in his room:

> So it turns out your timing is impeccable! 
> 
> About three minutes after you left, Yura showed up at my room and called me a has-been and ate everything on the table that we didn’t finish 
> 
> I told him if he posted any of the pictures with you and Chris, I’d post the one where you look gorgeous and he’s tripping over his own feet 
> 
> This one btw 
> 
> _[Attachment: IMG_4945.jpg]_
> 
> He called me some VERY rude names! 
> 
> But he got the message, so you should be in the clear! 

Before today, Yuuri wouldn’t have guessed that Victor Nikiforov uses so many exclamation points in his texts. Before today, Yuuri wouldn’t have guessed that Victor Nikiforov in private is such a confusing mixture of friendly, awkward, light-hearted, and tactless. Victor’s public persona doesn’t have any rough edges; he’s been in the public eye for so long that his facade is smooth and faultless. Public-facing Victor would never do something as simultaneously generous and rude as give someone an expensive tie because their current tie is, quote, “ugly.” Public-facing Victor wouldn't order someone to stand up with a voice like a drill sergeant and then wrap them up in a minutes-long, full-body hug.

Yuuri doesn’t know what to make of it. Several times on the first leg of the flight home, he pulls up the picture Victor took of the two of them and just looks at it, trying to understand what he’s seeing. Over the years, Yuuri’s seen plenty of other fans post selfies they took with Victor, and Victor almost always defaults to one of two types of smiles. The first one is sly, suggestive, meant to make the viewer swoon, and the second one is good-natured, personable, friendly. In both cases he looks handsome—he’s been in the public eye for so long that he instinctively knows his best angles.

But his smile in this picture seems different. His eyes are squintier, and his mouth is stretched wider, and his head isn’t at that perfect tilt. He looks _realer_ , somehow. Imperfect. Yuuri looks imperfect too: his hair in need of brushing, his own smile a little glassy with bewilderment. It’s probably their mutual awkwardness that stopped Victor from posting the picture online—Yuuri knows he hasn’t, because when he checks his phone during a layover, he isn’t greeted with twenty-eight frantic messages from Phichit. But Yuuri gets the impression Victor really _had_ wanted to post the pictures of them dancing. Victor sends him copies of those too, in his second barrage of text messages, which arrive as Yuuri’s transferring planes in Moscow:

> Poor Yuuri, I just looked up how long it takes to get from Sochi to Detroit! 
> 
> It said anywhere from 14 to 20 hours depending on layovers((((( 
> 
> I feel guilty! Sochi to St. Petersburg is barely three hours! 
> 
> But at least Worlds is in Boston this year 
> 
> Then you’ll be the one with the short flight and I’ll be the one suffering 
> 
> I can’t believe I have to wait that long to see you again! 
> 
> _[Attachment: IMG_7884.jpg] [Attachment: IMG_7885.jpg]_
> 
> Promise you’ll save another dance for me when we’re there)))))) 

Yuuri doesn’t know which is more alarming: Victor’s casual, almost affectionate-sounding tone, or his carefree assumption that Yuuri’s going to be the one representing Japan at Worlds. He really must have only watched Yuuri’s good performances; he seems to have no idea how inconsistent he can be. Yuuri types and deletes four separate texts trying to temper Victor’s expectations, then gives up and just sends a lame **_Yeah, it’s nice that it’ll be close._** He also asks about the bouquets of parentheses Victor keeps attaching to his texts, and he gets the prompt response:

> Oh! It’s the Russian smiley face/frowny face 
> 
> We leave off the eyes because the : is annoying to type on the Cyrillic keyboard 
> 
> Then when I type in English I always forget I could be using it :) :) :) 

Before today, Yuuri wouldn’t have guessed that Victor Nikiforov uses so many smilies in his texts. Victor had been bubbly and cheerful back when he was in Juniors, when he was still an up-and-comer with something to prove, but as time went on that had faded away. These days Victor is a consummate professional when it comes to the media: engaging and interesting, but always measured. It never occurred to Yuuri that Victor might’ve changed in front of the camera but not behind it. Yuuri’s spent a decade admiring Victor from afar, and all these newly discovered gaps in his knowledge are making him feel a little seasick.

Yuuri’s also spent a decade dreaming of standing next to Victor on the podium, and it feels like cheating, almost, to be so friendly with him before that happens. In two days, the timeline of his life has fallen into total disarray. This was supposed to be the competition where he _finally_ realized his competitive potential. He had worked incredibly hard this year just to make it to the Grand Prix Final, pushing himself to exhaustion in his attempt to increase the difficulty of his programs and add a second quad to his repertoire. And now he’s going home with nothing but a last place finish, the grief of losing Vicchan, and the shame of having let down his supporters and fans.

And eighteen texts from Victor Nikiforov.

So where does that leave him? What does he do next? Back in April, before they got into the specifics of costumes and songs and choreography, Celestino had asked Yuuri to consider one basic question: _What do you want from this season?_ Now, seven months later, the same question presents itself. The season’s not over. There are still four months until Worlds. What does he want out of the next four months?

The answer comes to him easily: he wants to _win._ Despite his failure, and his shame—and the unexpected shortcut he’s taken into Victor’s awareness—Yuuri still feels the burning compulsion that’s been driving him forward all year. He wants to take gold at Nationals and earn his spot at Four Continents and Worlds. He wants to perform his free skate perfectly, quad Salchow and all. He wants to stand on the podium at Four Continents, and then do it again at Worlds: finally, _finally_ solidifying his place as Victor’s competitive peer.

So...

_So that’s what I’ll do._

The thought appears in Yuuri’s head as if someone else is thinking it for him, and when it does, he feels a profound sense of relief. Right. So that’s what he’ll do, then. It’s not like he _wants_ to stop—and Victor wouldn’t want him to stop, either. Retiring now would mean he’s leaving his dream unfinished and incomplete. Yuuri’s spent almost a decade trying to reach this point, and he can’t—he _won_ _’t—_ stop short of the finish line.

Yuuri boards his flight from Moscow to New York with a feeling of conviction. It’s so strong that it presses against the roof of his mouth and itches at the tips of his fingers. He wishes he had an outlet for it. But he can’t text anyone until he lands, and within minutes Celestino’s already snoring, his head pressed against the wall of the plane. Yuuri’s only connection to the world outside is the plane’s spotty Wi-Fi.

Yuuri waits until they get to cruising altitude, straightens in his seat, and opens up his Instagram.

 

***

 

Victor arrives home a scant three hours after boarding his own plane and immediately goes to pick up Makkachin from the dogsitter. Makkachin almost knocks him flat on his back when he arrives; she’s never outgrown her puppyish tendencies when she’s excited. He sits on the floor and hugs her and scratches her head just how she likes it, knowing he looks foolish and not caring in the slightest. In his mind’s eye he can still see the photo of Yuuri cradling his excited-looking puppy, and it makes him hug Makkachin even tighter.

The two of them take a long, circuitous route home, Makkachin bounding happily along in front of him, and she tires herself out enough that when they get back to the apartment, she's content to hop up on Victor's bed and doze while he unpacks his suitcases. Victor puts everything away until all that’s left is a stack of clothes headed for the dry cleaners and the small box with his medal inside. Victor takes off the lid and looks at it. A decade ago, this was always his favorite moment upon returning home: the self-indulgent pleasure of admiring his prize, luxuriating in the memory of his success. But he doesn’t feel that way about medals anymore. At this point in his winning streak, each medal no longer feels like its own individual success, but more like a checkmark in a growing tally. There’s nothing very romantic about a checkmark in a tally. Victor has won the Grand Prix Final five years in a row—an objectively impressive feat—but standing there, looking at his medal, he only feels a vague sense of relief that he hasn’t broken the chain.

He closes the lid of the box and sets it near the front door to take to the rink tomorrow. He keeps the medals from his winning streak there in a locked display case, so at least other people might get some satisfaction from them. Yuri Plisetsky in particular finds them very motivating; he pauses to glare at them every day when he comes in for practice. Technically speaking, Victor should bring in his newest acquisition tonight, during the hour of ice time he’d optimistically reserved for himself before he left for Sochi. But he’s tired, and so was Yakov when he last saw him. When Victor texts Yakov to say he’s going to stay home and do off-ice conditioning instead, Yakov just texts back a curt **_Fine._**

Victor changes into his workout clothes and lays down his exercise mat on the floor. Then he goes to silence his phone so it can’t distract him, but when he turns the screen on, he sees a notification that makes his heart race:

> **katsuki-yuu just posted a photo**

Yuuri actually updated his Instagram! He quickly unlocks his phone, wondering what picture he’s posted, and he’s greeted with the same image that’s been quietly haunting his head all day: Yuuri and his puppy, frozen in a moment of innocent happiness. Underneath it are two long blocks of text, one in Japanese and one in English. Victor reads the second one:

> **katsuki-yuu**  These last few days have been hard for me. Despite everyone’s kind support, I didn't perform to an acceptable standard at the Grand Prix Final, and for that I apologize. I struggled partly because of my ongoing issues with nerves, and partly because of some bad news I recently received from home. When I moved to America to train with Coach Cialdini, it meant separating myself from my family and my dog, Vicchan. I was so single-minded in my desire to become a better skater that I thought this sacrifice was difficult but necessary. However, a few days ago, I received the news that Vicchan had unexpectedly passed away. Not only did I feel grief for losing him, but also guilt for having spent so much time away from him. I know he loved my parents and my sister very much, and I know that his life with them was happy. But I also know that he never understood why I wasn’t there anymore. It’s this guilt and regret that’s caused me such distraction over the last few days. I don’t mention this because I want to be easily excused for my poor performance, however. As you’ve seen, inconsistency is something I struggle with even under normal circumstances. I mention this because Vicchan was important to me, and because even as I’m committed to doing my best this season, I am still not confident that the choices I made were the right ones. I can only hope my actions from here forward will be an honor to his memory.

Victor looks up from his phone. The ache in his chest is back, mingled with a strange feeling of pride. Yuuri had listened to him; instead of shying away, Yuuri had gathered up his courage and laid out everything for the world to see. And Yuuri’s words are so completely _him_ : heartfelt, full of startling self-blame, darting unpredictably between circumspect and bold. Victor can’t remember the last time he met someone so difficult to predict. He’s only known Yuuri for a day, and practically every moment of it has been a surprise.

Victor loves surprises.

If there _is_ a disappointed little voice in the back of Victor’s head, pointing out that Yuuri failed to mention meeting Victor at all, it’s nothing worth paying attention to. It’s vain of him to think he deserves a mention when the topic is Yuuri’s dog and career and family. Victor carries his phone back into his bedroom, pausing to give a sleepy Makkachin a scratch behind the ears, then sets his phone down on the nightstand and leaves it there. He goes back out to his waiting exercise mat and begins to do his warm-up stretches.

But his concentration, which usually falls into place immediately upon starting his routine, stays scattered instead. Yuuri just put his heart out on the line: surely Victor should respond somehow, right? He could like Yuuri’s post, or comment on it, but then again, his presence might end up distracting people from Yuuri’s message. He should send Yuuri a text, then. He won’t get it until his plane’s out of the air, but that’s okay.

Victor springs to his feet and goes back to the bedroom. Makkachin snuffles with bewilderment as Victor sits down next to her, kisses her head, and composes his message:

> That was a wonderful statement you made, Yuuri, I’m so glad you posted it))) 

He sets his phone back down on the nightstand and goes back out to the front room. This time when he starts his routine again, he can concentrate a little better, except for a nagging voice in the back of his head that says his message was awfully short, given the magnitude of what Yuuri just did. He should’ve added something about Yuuri’s bravery in being so honest—or scolded him for being so hard on himself—or—

Victor turns his head mid-hamstring stretch and looks at his bedroom. His muscles itch to lift him up and take him back inside. But no, he’s being ridiculous. He’s already being too lenient with himself by skipping his ice time this evening, and he definitely can’t afford to just lounge around in bed, trying to think of the perfect things to say to Yuuri. Russian Nationals are in three weeks, and Europeans is hard on its heels. He needs to _focus._

It turns out to be much easier said than done.

 

***

 

Yuuri and Celestino land in Detroit at midnight local time. Yuuri is a bleary-eyed zombie: he didn’t manage to sleep at all on the flight, too full of nerves about his Instagram post. He knows he shouldn’t read the comments people are posting to it, but he can’t help himself. A lot of the responses are kind and encouraging, although a few are so cruel and dismissive that it makes Yuuri’s stomach clench. The most surprising response comes from Yuri Plisetsky’s official account: a one-word comment of **_Sorry._** It’s so uncharacteristically nice that Yuuri has to double-check and verify it’s actually him.

Victor doesn’t comment. Yuuri isn’t sure whether to feel disappointed or relieved. All of Yuuri’s fans know how much he admires Victor, and it still seems wrong to have caught Victor’s attention after such a disappointing performance. Maybe it’s better that people don’t know they met. If Yuuri perseveres and makes it to Worlds, he can talk about it then, proudly, with his head held high.

On the drive home from the airport, all those hours of missed cell service come rushing back into Yuuri’s phone. Several people have texted him about the post, including Victor, whose latest text barrage is four lines long and spaced out over a few hours:

> That was a wonderful statement you made, Yuuri, I’m so glad you posted it))) 
> 
> Even though I still think you’re being too hard on yourself! 
> 
> But it showed great courage to put your emotions out there like that 
> 
> I’m going to sleep, but definitely still text me when your plane lands, so I know you’re home safe! 

Yuuri texts back a bleary thank-you and an assurance that he’s safe on the ground. By the time Celestino drops Yuuri and his suitcases off at home, it’s nearly 1 in the morning. Yuuri hauls everything inside, plugs in his dying phone to charge, and collapses asleep still wearing his clothes.

He wakes up the next morning not to the sound of his alarm, but to the sound of rapid knocking on his bedroom door. He recognizes it as Phichit’s emergency knock, the one he reserves for flooding toilets or escaped hamsters. Yuuri rubs his eyes. “Come in,” he says.

Phichit has the door open and his phone shoved in front of Yuuri’s face almost instantly. _“Yuuri!”_ he exclaims, in a tone that skirts the line between thrilled and betrayed. _“What is this?”_

Yuuri blinks at the phone screen. It’s—

“Oh,” he says weakly. It’s the picture of him and Victor in Victor’s hotel room. “Where did you get that?”

“Where did _I_ get it?” Phichit says. “Victor Nikiforov posted it! On his Instagram!”

Yuuri squints at the image. Sure enough, there’s Victor’s username and picture above it, and below it he’s written a caption that Yuuri’s dazed eyes can’t quite focus on. _“Yuuri!”_ Phichit repeats, so agitated he’s bouncing on his toes. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this!”

“When would I have told you?” Yuuri asks. “You were asleep when I got back.”

“You should’ve woken me up!”

“It’s not—that big a deal,” Yuuri says lamely.

“He’s the reason you became a figure skater, of _course_ it’s a big deal!” Phichit shoves his phone into Yuuri’s hands. “Here, read what he said!”

> **v-nikiforov**  Me and **@katsuki-yuu,** meeting up for breakfast shortly before our flights leave! Yuuri, I’ve had such a wonderful time getting to know you these past few days, and I couldn’t be more impressed by your strength and honesty in the face of a very emotionally difficult situation. Becoming an athlete of your caliber means making a lot of difficult life decisions, and I know you never made any of them lightly. I’m so proud and honored that I played a role in bringing you and Vicchan together all those years ago.
> 
> Good luck at the All-Japan Championships later this month, and hopefully in March the two of us will be taking another picture like this at Worlds!

Yuuri swallows around a lump that’s risen up into his throat and hands Phichit his phone back. “He’s so _nice_ ,” he says, for what feels like the hundredth time in days.

“I can’t believe you’ve been talking to him for days and you didn’t even _text_ me,” Phichit laments. “You have to tell me everything— _everything,_ Yuuri! I’ll make breakfast, and you talk.”

 

***

 

Victor finds a time zone converter and discovers that Detroit is eight hours behind St. Petersburg. It is, therefore, silly of him to be disappointed when he finishes his late morning on-ice practice and finds that Yuuri still hasn’t replied to the texts he sent that morning. It’s the middle of the night in Detroit, and Yuuri’s probably exhausted from the long trip home. Victor probably shouldn’t be texting him at all, in case it wakes him up. But he can’t help himself: by the time mid-afternoon rolls around, he’s sent seven in total:

> Wow! I just saw that Yura commented on your Instagram post! 
> 
> I think that might be the first time he’s used the word “sorry” in his life! 
> 
> Maybe this will teach him not to go around yelling at people? 
> 
> Probably not)))))) 
> 
> I hope it’s okay that I posted the picture of us on Instagram 
> 
> I probably should’ve waited longer so it didn’t distract from the post you made 
> 
> But it’s just such a cute picture! I wanted everyone to see it))) 

During his lunch break, Victor loads up Yuuri’s Instagram and browses through it. It’s disappointingly official, full of competition pictures and podium shots. Yuuri’s evidently not the kind of person to take photos of his food or selfies in the bathroom mirror. The few candid shots of Yuuri are always of him posing with his roommate, the cute Thai skater Victor remembers watching at Four Continents. Even though Yuuri said they weren’t dating, Victor looks at their smiling faces and feels distinctly jealous.

Then he clicks through to **phichit+chu** ’s Instagram, and his jealousy turns immediately into delight. Phichit Chulanont is _absolutely_ the kind of person who takes photos of his food and selfies in the bathroom mirror. His Instagram is a busy documentation of his entire life, and that includes Yuuri. Victor finds a picture Phichit took of Yuuri lying on the couch, playing a handheld video game, his hair disheveled and his t-shirt falling off one shoulder. Victor is momentarily transfixed by it, to the point where he doesn’t notice the footsteps coming up behind him until it’s too late.

“Oh, _gross_ ,” a voice says. Victor glances up; Yuri Plisetsky is looking over his shoulder at the picture, his face twisted up in disgust. “Are you _cyber-stalking_ him?”

“Yes!” Victor says cheerfully. He hits _Like_ on the photo.

For some reason that makes Yuri’s face twist up even more. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” Yuri demands. “You know your likes are public, right? You want the entire world to know you’re looking at his pictures like a thirsty creep?”

In all honesty, Victor doesn’t mind the idea _that_ much, but he also doesn’t want Yuuri to feel uncomfortable. “You’re right,” he says, and hits the button again to un-like it. “I’ll just save it to my phone.”

“Ugh,” Yuri says. “You are so fucking embarrassing.”

Yuri’s the kind of person who’s best appreciated in small doses, and Victor feels like the last twenty seconds is plenty for one day. “By the way,” he says breezily, “did you check the display case on your way in? Five in a row looks pretty nice, doesn't it?"

It elicits the reaction Victor hoped it would: Yuri gives him a baleful glare and swivels on his heel, stalking off toward the locker room. Hopefully Yakov will appreciate the boost of competitive fire it gives him during practice.

Victor spends the rest of his lunch break going through Phichit’s Instagram. When it’s time to start his cardio, he has three more pictures of Yuuri saved to his phone and zero new text messages. Which is fine. It’s still the pre-dawn hours in Detroit, and Yuuri is undoubtedly still sleeping. Victor goes to start his exercise routine, vowing to not give it a second thought.

It’s so much easier said than done.

 

***

 

Yuuri tells Phichit...almost everything.

He tells him about getting drunk at the banquet. He tells him he danced inappropriately with Chris Giacometti—“How _else_ can you dance with Chris Giacometti?” Phichit says—and that he challenged an angry fourteen-year-old to a breakdancing contest. He tells him he danced with Victor, and drunkenly helped himself to Victor’s tie, and went to give it back the next morning and, bewilderingly, failed.

He doesn’t mention the cab ride back to the hotel, dozing off on Victor’s shoulder with Victor’s arm secure around him. He also doesn’t mention the way Victor hugged him when he started crying over Vicchan. Those moments feel...complicated, somehow, and he doesn’t think Phichit would interpret them with the appropriate nuance. When Yuuri finally finishes his story, along with the smoothie Phichit made him for breakfast, Phichit leans his elbows on the kitchen table and says, thoughtfully, “He’s into you.”

_“Phichit-kun,”_ Yuuri groans, getting up to put his glass in the sink.

“I’m being serious!” Phichit says. “He’s got all the symptoms. He’s texting you a million times, he’s giving you presents, and he followed _me_ on Instagram.”

“Wait, he did?” Yuuri asks.

Phichit holds out his phone, and sure enough, right there in the middle of his other notifications it says:

> **v-nikiforov started following you** 3h.

“I thought it was just a fan account when I saw it earlier,” Phichit says. “But no, it’s really him! He must’ve figured out I’m the only place he’s going to see pictures of you online.”

Yuuri remembers belatedly that he had mentioned Phichit to Victor—and that Victor’s first reaction was to ask if the two of them were dating. He decides not to mention that, either. “Has he texted you at all this morning?” Phichit asks.

“I didn’t check.”

Phichit looks scandalized. “We’ve been talking for twenty minutes! How could you leave your phone unattended for so long? I’ll go get it for you.”

Phichit’s motivations are as transparent as glass, but Yuuri lets him do it anyway. Phichit comes back with Yuuri’s phone in hand and a satisfied look on his face. He hands the phone to Yuuri, the screen illuminated with the prominently displayed banner:

> **Victor Nikiforov**
> 
> 7 Text Messages

As much as Yuuri thinks Victor’s actions are less clear-cut than Phichit’s making them out to be, seven text messages is a _lot_ to send a virtual stranger over the course of eight hours. He unlocks his phone and reads them.

“What’s he saying?” Phichit asks.

“Just...friendly things,” Yuuri says. “Conversation. The same kind of stuff you’d text me.”

And the absurdity of it suddenly overwhelms him. They’re arguing over whether Victor Nikiforov likes Yuuri: _Victor Nikiforov_ , the four-time consecutive World champion. Victor Nikiforov, who does cologne commercials and fashion photoshoots. Victor Nikiforov, who until a few days ago existed on a pedestal that seemed impossibly far from Yuuri’s reach.

“Well, don’t keep the poor guy in suspense,” Phichit says. “Text him back!”

Yuuri does.

 

***

 

Victor goes an extra half-hour on his cardio, trying to make up for his distraction and yesterday’s laziness. When he’s done, he goes and showers, then dries off and gets dressed, then puts on his coat and gathers up his gear and goes outside into the cold. It’s then, and only then, that he allows himself to look at his phone.

There’s a banner on the lock screen that says:

> **Yuuri Katsuki**
> 
> 5 Text Messages

His heart leaps in his chest. He hurriedly unlocks his phone and reads:

> I couldn’t believe Yuri posted that either, I didn’t even believe it was him at first 
> 
> (Should I be calling him Yura? I thought maybe I shouldn’t, because he and I aren’t friends) 
> 
> Thank you for saying such kind things in your Instagram post 
> 
> I feel like I can see a path forward now, and I don't think I would have found it without your encouragement 
> 
> So thank you for that 

It’s 2 degrees Celsius in St. Petersburg that afternoon, but in that moment, Victor feels as warm as summer. He types:

> ))))))))))) 
> 
> I can't wait to see where the path takes you, Yuuri! 
> 
> And Yura would probably yell at you for calling him that 
> 
> But he'd probably yell at you no matter what you called him 
> 
> So I say do whatever you like)) 

He only gets half a block down the road before his phone buzzes again:

> Then I’ll stick to calling him Yuri 
> 
> I don’t need to give him more reasons to be mad at me 

All at once, Victor is acutely aware of the digital tether connecting them. Somewhere, thousands of kilometers away, Yuuri is looking at his phone _right now_ , reading Victor’s words and thinking of him. Well, thinking of him and Yuri, which is less romantic. But—

His phone buzzes again:

> Phichit mentioned you followed him on Instagram 
> 
> He wants to know if he can brag or if you want to keep it discreet 

Okay, he’s thinking of him, Yuri, _and_ Phichit. Victor’s starting to feel slightly less special. Still, Phichit is the reason Victor now has a picture of Yuuri in an off-the-shoulder t-shirt saved to his phone, so he types:

> Of course he can brag! 
> 
> Tell him he’s got an excellent eye for photography 
> 
> And good taste in subject matter))) 

Thirty seconds later, Yuuri replies:

> I assume you mean the hamsters 

Yuuri’s _joking_ with him! He’s never done that before. Victor is so surprised that it takes him a moment to realize he’s stopped walking and is just standing there in the middle of the sidewalk, grinning at his phone. He quickly rouses himself and hurries down the street. 

When Victor first left the rink, it had been with aching calves and sore feet. But by the time he gets home, his phone buzzing every few minutes with a new reply from Yuuri, he feels like he could skate for hours and never run out of energy.

 

***

 

St. Petersburg, Yuuri learns, is eight hours ahead of Detroit. That means Victor is already done with his day of practice by the time Yuuri is getting dressed to go to the rink. Yuuri tosses his phone onto the bed for a moment while he pulls a t-shirt over his head, and he hears its muffled buzz as he receives yet another text from Victor. In the last twenty minutes, Yuuri has learned all sorts of new things about Victor, the kind of trivial minutiae that he used to eagerly seek out in magazine articles. He now knows that Victor has never seen a hamster in real life before. He knows that Victor lives fifteen minutes away from his rink in an apartment he’s had since he was nineteen.  He knows there’s a pastry shop on the route between his apartment and the rink, and Victor used to stop there to cheat on his diet occasionally, until Yakov appealed to the owner’s patriotism and convinced her to stop serving sweets to Russia’s great hope for Olympic gold.

Yuuri tugs his t-shirt the rest of the way down and picks up his phone. Victor’s most recent text is just the word **_Yuuri!!_** , probably meant indignantly, after Yuuri failed to condemn Yakov as humanity’s greatest monster. Yuuri can’t help but smile, because he can _hear_ the way Victor would say it, his bright cadence and feigned offense. What an insane thought that is: Victor Nikiforov has said Yuuri’s name enough times that Yuuri can instantly conjure up the sound of it in his head.

Yuuri puts on his jacket and goes over to his closet to grab a scarf. His hand pauses on the door. He’s face-to-face with Victor’s image: a poster from two seasons ago that Yuuri had taped up when he first moved in. Yuuri’s had so many posters of Victor over the years that they’ve become part of the fabric of his life, but he finds himself staring at this one with fresh eyes. Victor is breathtakingly handsome in it, his expression soulful, his arms stretched out with perfect poise. He seems radiant and faraway, untouchable by mere mortals.

Yuuri’s phone buzzes again:

> I’m a grown man! I should be able to choose pastries over gold medals if I want to! 

Yuuri stifles a laugh. He opens the closet door and fumbles around for his scarf, typing out one-handed:

> That’s short-term thinking 

As Yuuri’s winding the scarf around his neck, Victor replies:

> Yuuri you’re so responsible(( 
> 
> I thought I was supposed to be your coach, not the other way around 

Yuuri's face gets hot. Victor keeps teasing him about that: the one thing he said that managed to be more embarrassing than his entire time on the pole with Chris. Yuuri closes his closet door and looks at the poster again. Really, how could he have thought these carefully staged photos captured even part of Victor’s complexity? Out on the ice, Victor seems as bright and distant as a star, but off the ice he's _crowding_ Yuuri, coming in close with hugs, touches, the endless buzz of text messages. Out on the ice, Victor is an artist, but off the ice, he’s just...a person, like anyone else. He’s funny, awkward, kind. Ordinary.

Yuuri reaches up and carefully pulls on the corner of the poster, detaching the adhesive on the back. He peels it off his closet door and sets it down on his desk. He still admires Victor the artist—still _idolizes_ him—but he doesn’t want that to get in the way of understanding this off-ice Victor, the one who isn’t always photo-ready.

The one who has unexpectedly become Yuuri’s friend.

The two of them trade texts all the way from Yuuri’s apartment to the rink, and when Yuuri says he has to stop for practice, Victor says a cheerful goodbye and immediately goes radio silent. He, of all people, knows the importance of staying focused, especially in this crucial moment of the season when competitions are only weeks and months away. When Yuuri steps onto the ice and skates up to Celestino, Celestino puts his hands on his hips and looks at Yuuri expectantly.

“So,” he says. “The Grand Prix Final didn’t go how you wanted.”

Here it is: the inevitable talk about Yuuri’s future. He nods.

“But the season’s not even close to being over,” Celestino continues. “You’re still the favorite to win All-Japan at the end of the month. You’ve had some time to think about it, so tell me: what are your goals for the rest of the season?”

As much as Yuuri likes Celestino, his frankness has always left him feeling a little shy. Fortunately, he spent most of the plane trip home rehearsing his answer to this exact question.

“I want to take gold at Nationals,” Yuuri says. “I want to be chosen for Four Continents and Worlds, and I want to medal at both.”

For a moment Celestino looks surprised. Then he smiles. “And what medals are you aiming for?”

Part of Yuuri quails at that. He wants to say gold—he _always_ wants to say gold—but he can never bring himself to be so brash. He knows it’s not realistic. At Four Continents, Cao Bin and JJ Leroy will have higher base scores than him; at Worlds, Victor and Chris will have higher base scores than everyone. Deep in Yuuri’s heart, in a place he rarely allows himself to look, he wants to be good enough to beat all of them—even Victor. But right now, with his skill level and program layout, he isn’t there yet.

“If I perform my very best, I think silver is in my reach for Four Continents, and bronze is in my reach for Worlds,” Yuuri says. “So that’s what I’ll aim for.” Then, with an unexpected burst of confidence, he says: “At minimum.”

Celestino raises his formidable eyebrows. Then he gives Yuuri a clap on the back. “Good,” he says. “I’m glad to hear it. Now go get warmed up.”

 

***

 

“Vitya!” Yakov snaps. “Put down that phone and get back to work. You’re as bad as Yura these days.”

Victor finishes the text he’s composing and steps back onto the ice. At least he’s better than Yura in that respect: he actually listens to his coach sometimes. Well...to a certain degree, anyway. Yakov wants Victor to leave his phone in the locker room from the moment he gets to the rink to the moment he leaves it, to ensure his absolute concentration. Yakov isn’t sympathetic to the fact that Victor’s afternoon practice time overlaps with the few precious hours he and Yuuri are both awake at the same time. Yesterday, Yakov had finally figured out that Victor’s ongoing distraction was thanks to one person in particular, and he had said, amusingly, “Tell this boy to stop texting you. He’s being a nuisance.”

Victor laughed. “You have it backward, Yakov,” he said. _“I’m_ being the nuisance.”

Which is true. In the five days since they left Sochi, Victor has sent Yuuri so many messages that, at one point, he felt compelled to ask Yuuri if it was bothering him. To which Yuuri replied:

> No, it’s all right. If I’m busy I just ignore them until I have time to answer 

Which is maybe not the most _romantic_ way Yuuri could’ve phrased it, but it still counts as a reassurance. Victor has also been getting support from a more unlikely source: Phichit Chulanont, who showed up in Victor’s Instagram DMs a few days ago sounding as cheerful as his pictures.

> Hi there! 
> 
> I knew being the only source of Yuuri Katsuki photos on the internet would pay off one day 

> I also like the latte art! 
> 
> I’d never seen a latte hamster before 
> 
> Neither had the guy at the coffee shop! He practiced it just for me :) 
> 
> Yuuri told me about his scandalous behavior at the banquet 
> 
> Be honest: how inappropriate was his dance with Chris Giacometti? 
> 
> !!! 
> 
> It was amazing! 
> 
> I never imagined anyone could beat Chris at pole-dancing 
> 
> It was maybe a little too nude for a formal event 
> 
> But everyone was extremely impressed by their skill! 
> 
> It was pole dancing??? 
> 
> omg LOL 
> 
> He only breaks that out when he’s EPICALLY drunk 

Yuuri, it turns out, isn’t often epically drunk—a fact that Phichit puts out there tactfully, seeming to trust Victor to read between the lines. He doesn’t have to worry. Victor already knows that sober Yuuri is quite different from drunk Yuuri, but the quality that captivates Victor the most is something they both share: an inner fire, bright and hot and strong. Phichit has generously increased the number of Yuuri photos he posts to two or three a day, and in all the shots of Yuuri practicing on the ice, Victor can _see_ Yuuri’s determination and resolve in the way he holds himself, in the unconscious expression on his face.

But Victor has to admit that still images and texting are a poor substitute for actually being in Yuuri’s presence. Sometimes, when the two of them are texting back and forth, he’ll replay that feeling of Yuuri in his arms: a sense-memory so palpable that Victor can almost feel the weight of him against his chest. But he quickly finds out that he can’t do it too often, because along with the sense-memory comes that persistent ache in his heart, the good intermingled with the bad. He’s trying to stay positive about the long four months before he can see Yuuri again, and that ache saps his optimism.

But there are other communication options besides texting and talking in person. Later that day, Yuuri makes an unexpected overture: he sends Victor a picture of a gorgeous Bernese Mountain dog he and Phichit met while walking home from practice.

> Phichit is fine with dogs, but he doesn’t APPRECIATE them 
> 
> So I wanted you to see this because I knew you’d appreciate her 
> 
> Her name is Poppy! 

Yuuri’s usual texting style is rather spartan, so the capital letters and exclamation point are basically the equivalent of him jumping up and down. Victor’s heart jumps with it. He types:

> She’s so beautiful! And so enormous and majestic! Did you get to pet her? 

Yuuri replies:

> No, I was too shy to ask 

And then:

> ((((((( 

Victor can confidently say it’s the first time a string of frowny faces has caused him actual physical pain. Yuuri being so excited over a dog that he resorts to _Russian emoticons_ is the cutest thing he’s ever done, and in that moment Victor feels every one of the 7000 kilometers that separate them like a lead weight on top of his chest. He wants to see Yuuri again so badly he almost can’t breathe.

But Yuuri’s texts also seem to suggest that he’s open to talking about dogs now, which is a relief. Victor has carefully avoided mentioning Makkachin in his texts, even though she’s one of the cornerstones of his life, because he didn’t want to make Yuuri feel sad. But the next day, at a point when he knows Yuuri is still asleep, Victor sends out a tentative offer:

> I wanted to ask you something 
> 
> You can definitely say no if you don’t feel comfortable with it right now 
> 
> But I wondered if you wanted to Skype sometime, so you could meet Makkachin? 

He purposefully doesn’t ask when he and Yuuri are in the middle of texting back and forth, to give Yuuri the time and space to think about it on his own. But when Victor checks his phone after practice, he finds a text message that’s time-stamped 3:01 PM, AKA one minute after Yuuri’s alarm clock went off in Detroit:

> Yes! I’d love to! 

_Two_ exclamation points! Victor’s whole body goes warm.

The two of them figure out a time to call—Yuuri getting up an hour earlier than usual, Victor pushing his conditioning session to early evening—and the next day, Victor sets his laptop on top of a footstool and sits down on the floor with a racing heart. When the appointed time arrives, the call pops up from Yuuri, and Victor leans forward and answers it.

And—there he is. The image is a little grainy, and the lighting on Yuuri's end makes him look washed out, but _there he is._ “Hi,” Yuuri says, and the sound of his voice sets off a flood of sense-memories in Victor’s brain: the smell of champagne, Yuuri’s head nestled against his shoulder, the sight of his blush-red ears peeking through his rumpled hair.

“Hi!” Victor says, just barely managing to rein in the sudden wild delight that’s filling him up. “It’s so good to see you!”

“It’s good to see you too,” Yuuri says. Despite their days of texting, he sounds a little shy again. His hair is messier than it was in Sochi—well, of course, he just woke up—and the neck of his t-shirt is slightly off-center, revealing a small patch of his shoulder. Victor, who has spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at Phichit’s picture of Yuuri lying on the couch, is starting to have a thing for shoulders.

The wall behind Yuuri is oddly featureless. “Where are you calling from?” Victor asks.

“My bedroom.”

“Do they not let you put things on the walls?” Victor asks. “It looks like a hospital ward.”

For some reason Yuuri ducks his head. “Oh,” he says. “I’m, um, redecorating.” Then, a little hurriedly: “Is that your apartment?”

“Yes!” Victor says. He leans away from the camera for a second so Yuuri can see the blue couch and dark wooden bookshelves. “I’m on the floor, so you can see Makkachin better.”

“Where is she?”

“Standing guard by the window,” Victor says. “Whenever she hears another dog barking outside, it’s _very_ important that she go look and make sure they’re not encroaching on her territory. Are you ready to meet her?”

“Yes!” Yuuri says, the shyness in his voice disappearing. 

Victor calls over to the window, _“Makkachin!”_ Makkachin, who has her paws up on the windowsill to help her see outside better, looks briefly over at Victor and then back outside. “Makkachin,” he repeats, a little exasperated, and taps his hand against the floor. “Come here.”

It takes another few seconds of cajoling, but Makkachin eventually decides the threat outside the window can wait and trots over to where Victor is sitting. She looks at him, not the laptop screen, so Victor opens his arms and says “Come here!” again. She steps forward and gives his cheek an enthusiastic lick, and he hugs her and turns her around so she’s facing the camera. “Makkachin, look!” Victor says, leaning forward to tap at the screen. “This is Yuuri!”

The smile on Yuuri’s face is wider than Victor’s ever seen it. “ _Privet,_ Makkachin!” Yuuri says. _“Ochen’ priyatno!”_

Makkachin’s tail gives an interested wag, and she steps forward and noses at the screen. Victor tugs her back before she can push it off the footstool, his heart doing a little somersault in his chest. “Aw, Yuuri, she’s happy to meet you too!” he says. “How much Russian do you know? You pronounced that quite well.”

“I only know the guidebook phrases,” Yuuri says. “But I didn’t know if she was fluent in English, so I wanted to make sure she understood me.”

He says _fluent_ so seriously that Victor wants to laugh. “She’s pretty multi-lingual, for a dog,” he says. “When I first got her, I taught her all the dog commands in every language I knew. I think I assumed that one day we’d be cosmopolitan world travelers together, and she’d need to blend in.”

Yuuri laughs. Then he gets a look on his face that’s almost embarrassed. “I know it’s silly,” he says. “But would you pet her for me?”

“Of course!” Victor says. He starts giving Makkachin her favorite head-scratches, and she leans into his hand, turning her head to look at him. “This is from Yuuri,” he informs her. She leans in and licks his face again. “No, it’s not from me!” he says, laughing. “It’s from Yuuri!”

He hears Yuuri laugh again, but this time there’s the slightest watery note in it. Victor glances back at the screen, and he sees Yuuri has taken off his glasses, swiping at one of his eyes with the side of his hand. “Oh, Yuuri,” Victor says, a little alarmed. “Are you—”

“No, it’s okay,” Yuuri says firmly. He wipes at his other eye and puts his glasses back on. “I’m very glad to be meeting her.”

Then Victor hears a shrill _yip-yip_ sound, and instantly Makkachin abandons Victor and runs for the window, putting her paws back up on the sill to see outside. Victor almost falls over as her counterbalancing weight disappears, and he throws out his hand to catch himself. “Makkachin!” he complains.

Yuuri laughs. “It’s okay,” he says. “I could hear the other dog through the microphone. It must be _very_ dangerous.”

“I’d say she’s usually better behaved, but I’d be lying,” Victor admits ruefully. “I spoil her too much. Well...” He shrugs expansively. “I guess you’ll have to make do with just me, until the danger’s over!”

Yuuri ducks his head again, a little shyness stealing back over him. “Um, how was your practice today?” he asks.

Victor doesn’t say _plagued by distraction,_ which is a phrase Yakov used during one of his tirades this morning. “So-so,” he says. “My quad toe-triple toe has abandoned me for the moment, but that’s my fault for putting it so late in the free. I wish I had your stamina, Yuuri.”

Yuuri’s shoulders sink a little. “I wish my stamina was doing me any good.”

“Your free program’s still giving you trouble?”

Yuuri nods. “I can’t manage a clean run-through,” he says. “I think—” He sighs. “I think it’s mental, more than anything. We put the difficulty higher than my reliable skill level, but I was doing pretty well with it before the Grand Prix Final. But now...I don’t know. I feel like I’ve lost my hold on it.”

“How’s your short program?”

“Fine,” Yuuri says. “That’s what’s so frustrating. It’s going well enough that I _know_ I should be doing better in the free.”

Victor taps his finger against his lower lip. “Have you taken video of the full routine recently?”

“No.”

“Why don’t you film it during practice today, and send me a copy of the video?” Victor says. “Maybe I’ll be able to see things that you’re missing.”

For some reason, Yuuri reacts to that with alarm. “Oh!” he says. “No, I couldn’t ask you to do that! You’re busy enough with your own practice.”

“You’re not asking, I’m offering,” Victor says. “How am I supposed to be a good coach if I don’t ever watch your routines?”

Yuuri drops his head into his hands. _“Victor,”_ he says. He always gets adorably embarrassed when Victor brings up his drunken request for coaching.

“What? I _really_ want to see you at Worlds, Yuuri!” Victor says. He keeps his voice light, even though it’s probably the most seriously-felt thing he’s said all morning. “I can’t let a misbehaving program get in the way of that!”

Yuuri lifts his head just enough to peek over the tips of his fingers. “Are you _sure_ you have enough time for it?” he asks.

_Another distraction_ , says a little voice inside Victor’s head. It sounds suspiciously like Yakov.

Victor ignores it. “Positive,” he says.

***

 

It’s ridiculous for Yuuri to be this nervous about showing his free program to Victor. Victor has already witnessed the worst version Yuuri’s ever done, and he _still_ inexplicably chose to be friends with him. But even so, when Yuuri steps onto the ice to film, he’s anxious and distracted enough that he doesn’t even make it to center ice before he trips over his toepick and goes sprawling.

Phichit, standing rinkside with his phone, tries and fails to muffle his laughter. “Don’t worry, I’ll cut that part out,” he says.

The version Yuuri ends up sending Victor doesn’t turn out awful, but it can’t really be called _good_ , either. On rewatch, Yuuri picks out several technical errors and moments of sloppiness—and frustratingly, many of them are _different_ than the ones Celestino and Yuuri have been working so hard to fix all week. When Yuuri sends the video off, he suffers through two hours of awful silence before Victor finally texts him back.

> Okay! I watched it and made a lot of notes. Can we Skype again tomorrow at the same time as today? 

So Yuuri sets his alarm an hour early again, and after a night of tossing and turning he gets up to face his reckoning. This time when Victor answers his Skype call, he’s seated at a desk instead of on the floor. “Hi Yuuri!” Victor says cheerfully. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Yuuri says, sounding a little ill.

“Okay, I know we only have an hour to talk, and I have a lot of notes,” Victor says. He lifts up several loose-leaf notebook pages, filled margin-to-margin with text. “So let’s get started!”

According to the clock, their Skype call starts at 6:01 AM, and Victor does not pause for breath once for the next seventeen minutes. He cheerfully eviscerates the choreographer’s choices— _“how_ could she have thought that transition was graceful?”—and Yuuri’s choices—“you’re sacrificing beauty for points with that foot position, and it shows”—and generally picks the program apart in five-second chunks until it’s nothing but a pitiful heap of crumbs. For the first few minutes Yuuri can only sit there numbly, feeling somehow _worse_ than he had at the Grand Prix Final, confronted with the stomach-clenching reality that his idol, the best skater in the world, finds him severely lacking.

Then two things slowly dawn on Yuuri. The first is that Victor’s harsh, brisk cadence seems oddly familiar, even though it’s nothing like the way Victor speaks to him normally. Then he realizes: he sounds _exactly_ like his own coach, Yakov Feltsman, during one of his infamous tirades in the kiss and cry. When Yuuri and his friend Yuuko were younger, Yakov Feltsman was the unquestioned villain of Victor’s life story, always barking criticism at him after his performances, even if he won gold or broke a world record. They only begrudgingly forgave him when Victor insisted in interviews that Yakov’s criticism never hurt his feelings. “He only scolds me because he has faith that I can do even better,” Victor had said. “Honestly, I’d be more worried if he _didn_ _’t_ scold me.”

The second thing that dawns on Yuuri is that Victor is _right._ There’s a kernel of truth in every harsh thing he says, and for the last ten minutes Yuuri finds himself almost rapt, listening as Victor expertly unstitches Yuuri’s program and lays out the component pieces in front of him. Not everything he says is a criticism—he also gives credit where it’s due. But Victor has an unerring ability to pinpoint weakness and discordance, and for the first time Yuuri can truly perceive how _ruthless_ Victor has learned to be with himself in order to achieve his level of success.  

Then Victor finally finishes his monologue, and in the momentary silence that follows, Yuuri can see the way he switches from _Victor Nikiforov,_ genius and champion, to the ordinary Victor who texts Yuuri about wanting to cheat on his diet. “But Yuuri, let’s talk about the real problem with your program,” Victor says.

Yuuri almost snorts. “The real problem?”

“You’re afraid of it,” Victor says simply. “I watched the versions you did at Skate Canada and the NHK Trophy, and I compared them to what you sent me. You’re skating it like it’s some kind of monster you have to placate. All the emotional nuance is gone.”

His tone is much more gentle now, but it might hurt worse than anything he’s said so far, because Yuuri can immediately see that he’s right. When Yuuri’s out on the ice doing a run-through, he’s not immersing himself in the music the way he did at the start of the season. He’s listening to the constant anxious refrain playing in the back of his mind: that he has to get it right, that he has to redeem himself, that he has to show everyone what he’s capable of. The version he sent Victor isn’t anywhere near as bad as it was at the Grand Prix Final, but it never rises above workmanlike. It’s hollow at its core—empty.

Yuuri sets his elbows on the desk in front of him and buries his face in his hands. Nationals are nine days away, and along with correcting a host of technical problems, he now has to somehow pry himself back open emotionally. “But!” Victor says brightly. “I had an idea.”

“What?”

“Well, I looked at the calendar for All-Japan,” Victor says. “Did you know you’ll be doing your free skate on my birthday?”

Yuuri looks up. “No,” he says. “Oh God, why would you tell me that?”

“Because I want to make a birthday request!” Victor says, smiling. “I think, since you’re having a block with this program in particular, you should do something else for your free skate.”

Yuuri’s mind immediately rebels at the idea. He hates having to revert back to previous seasons’ programs in a competition; it’s like going out on the ice and waving a bright red banner that says _INCAPABLE_ on it. Celestino’s convinced him to do it twice before, dusting off an old crowd favorite to replace a struggling program, and both times it made Yuuri feel cheap.

“Yuuri,” Victor says, “for my birthday, will you skate _Cloud to Raindrop_ for me?”

Yuuri is momentarily thrown. _Cloud to Raindrop_ is the exact opposite of a crowd favorite. He remembers Victor saying he liked it back in Sochi, but if Yuuri’s going to admit defeat and revert to an old program, it seems strange to pick one that the audience never warmed to. “I don’t think—”

“Hear me out!” Victor says. He holds up his fingers and starts ticking off the reasons. “It’s the program that makes the best use of your skills as a dancer. It has better flow than anything else you’ve done. And its theme is about change and metamorphosis. It’s the perfect statement to make as you move away from the Grand Prix Final and into the next part of the season.”

“It’s also the most unpopular program I’ve ever done,” Yuuri says. “If no one liked it the first time, why would they like it now?”

“Who cares what anyone else thinks?” Victor says cheerfully. “You’d be skating it for me!”

Yuuri makes a faint noise of disbelief. “ _You_ _’re_ not going to be judging it,” he says. “Didn’t you say you wanted to see me at Worlds? I don’t see how that program gets me there.”

Victor sighs, slumping a little. “Yuuri, I hate to be unromantic,” he says, “but you’re the only skater in your certification level in Japan. _Competence_ is all you need to get you there. If you went to Nationals and skated this season’s program exactly like you skated it in the video, it would take gold, flaws and all.” He cocks his head. “But I don’t think you’d feel satisfied by it.”

It’s the kind of thing Celestino’s been saying to Yuuri all week, too. Yuuri’s the favorite to win, and in terms of technical ability, no other Japanese skater can match him. But there’s no guarantee Yuuri will manage to _display_ that technical ability. If he skates his program the way he did at the Grand Prix Final, that’ll be the end of his season.

Victor leans in toward the camera. “Yuuri,” he says, a little wheedle in his voice. “It’s my _birthday._ _”_

Yuuri rolls his eyes. “I’m going to be _so old,_ _”_ Victor continues. “Who even knows how many birthdays I have left?”

“Stop it,” Yuuri says. “You’ve never been in better shape than you are now.”

“No,” Victor says sadly. “I’m past my prime. Did you know I haven’t broken a world record in _three years?_ _”_

“Oh, you poor baby,” Yuuri says dryly.

Victor goes oddly quiet for a moment. Then a smile blossoms on his face. “I know that’s supposed to be an insult,” he says, “but I kind of like it when you call me _baby_.”

The blood rushes to Yuuri’s face so fast that he can hear it moving in his ears. “I didn’t mean it like—”

“Just try performing it _once,_ Yuuri!” Victor says, and it takes Yuuri a second to realize he’s gone back to talking about _Cloud to Raindrop_. “Do a run-through of it at practice today and see how it feels. You’ll see what I mean! It’s a good program that never got its due.”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Yuuri says, too flustered to withstand anymore of Victor’s convincing. “I’ll try it.”

Victor grins, looking very pleased with himself. “But I haven’t performed it in three years, so I’m going to need to watch it a few times before I skate it,” Yuuri says. “So I’m going to hang up and do that now.”

Victor’s face falls. “Aw,” he says. “Okay. But text me after you’ve tried it, all right?”

“All right,” Yuuri says, and mumbles a goodbye before ending the call. He rubs at his burning face. Victor has teased Yuuri before—lightly, and usually about the embarrassing things Yuuri did while drunk—but that was...much flirtier than Yuuri was expecting.

Yuuri picks up his laptop and takes it out to the kitchen with him. He pulls up the version of _Cloud to Raindrop_ he skated at the NHK Trophy three years ago and starts to watch it while he eats breakfast. He really doesn’t like watching his past performances, especially performances that failed to connect with the audience and judges, but he tries to be impartial. Victor likes it, and Victor’s a genius, so Yuuri ought to be able to find _something_ redeeming about it.

What’s clear to him right away is how much he’s improved over the last three years. His younger self struggles with elements that don’t faze Yuuri at all these days, and he gets noticeably fatigued as the program wears on, his last two jumps under-rotated, his final spin traveling sloppily. He doesn’t have a single quad, and even his current bedrock jump, the triple Axel, comes off as strained and unelegant.

But the program itself? Yuuri tries to watch it with Victor’s eyes. It’s all about gradual change: from slow to fast, from heavy to light, from somber to joyful. The step sequence still holds up; Yuuri remembers how proud he’d been when he finally mastered the staccato part in the middle. Part of the problem, Yuuri realizes now, is that his younger self didn’t have the stamina to keep up with a program that got so much faster in the second half. No wonder people said it didn’t suit him: he was trying to tell a story that he was too weak of a skater to convincingly portray.

But could he do it now?

Yuuri's on his third viewing when he hears a door click open behind him. Phichit groggily emerges from his room, phone clutched loosely in his hand. “Morning,” he says. He rubs his eyes and looks at Yuuri’s laptop. “What are you watching?”

“One of my old programs,” Yuuri says. The thought of explaining why is so convoluted that he doesn’t bother trying.

Phichit stands behind Yuuri’s shoulder and watches for a little while. “I’ve never seen this one,” he says. Then, during Yuuri’s step sequence: “Wow,” he says. He bumps Yuuri’s shoulder with the edge of his phone. “You’re melting the ice out there! You never told me you had a secret sexy program in your repertoire.”

Yuuri almost knocks over his water glass. _“Sexy?”_

“Flirty,” Phichit says, and he mimics one of Yuuri’s arm movements, tossing his head back. “There’s a little bit of tango in it, right?”

Yuuri’s stomach lurches. “Oh God,” he says. “Where’s my phone?”

He goes back to his bedroom, grabs it from his desk, and fires off a text:

> Okay wait 
> 
> Do you like Cloud to Raindrop because it’s my “sexy” program? 

It only takes seconds for Victor to reply:

> ))))))))))))))))))))))))))) 

Yuuri groans. Phichit appears in the doorway, unwrapping a protein bar. “What’s going on?” he asks.

“Victor says I’m mentally blocked on my free program, and I should skate one of my old routines at Nationals,” Yuuri says. “And _that’s_ the one he wants me to skate.”

Phichit starts laughing mid-bite, crumbs falling out of his mouth. “Yeah, that sounds about right,” he says.

“I’m not doing it,” Yuuri says, and for good measure he texts that to Victor:

> I’m not doing it. 

Instantly his phone erupts in buzzes, three of them overlapping each other:

> No! 
> 
> Yuuri! 
> 
> Come on! 

And then Yuuri’s ringtone goes off, because now Victor is _calling_ him. Yuuri presses the Answer button and says, in lieu of a greeting, “No.”

_“Yuuri!”_ Victor wails. “That’s only _one_ reason I like it, it’s not the _only_ reason!”

“I only considered it because I thought you were suggesting it _objectively_ ,” Yuuri says.

“I am!” Victor says. “Mostly!”

“What am I supposed to tell Celestino?” Yuuri asks. “That I’m going to risk swapping out a competent program for one I haven’t practiced in three years, just because _you_ think I look sexy doing it?”

“I mean,” Victor says, a little helplessly. “Tell him it’s my birthday.”

Yuuri hears the click of the door as Phichit belatedly gives Yuuri some privacy. “But you saw it, right?” Victor says. “How much potential it has? And I have some thoughts about how you can bring the difficulty up, so it’s more in line with your program now.”

Yuuri sighs and presses his hand against his forehead. Because he _does_ see it, and he _does_ wonder if he could do the program again, properly this time. But it’s a gamble. After failing so badly at the Grand Prix Final, people aren’t going to be looking for him to be taking risks. They’re going to be looking for him to take what he did wrong and finally do it right.

“One run-through,” Victor pleads. “Just do it once and see how it feels. If it doesn’t feel right, you can forget I even mentioned it. But at least try it _once_.”

Yuuri drags his hand down the side of his face. The absurdity of the situation is almost too much to take. Victor Nikiforov, world champion, living legend, is begging _him_ to skate something.

“Once,” he says.

“Yes,” Victor says. He sounds audibly relieved.

When Yuuri emerges from his bedroom a few moments later, his phone in his pocket and his face hot, he finds Phichit tearing up spinach leaves and dropping them into the blender for his morning smoothie. Phichit smiles brightly at him and doesn’t say anything. Yuuri doesn’t say anything either. The silence between the two of them stretches, and stretches, and stretches.

“I think he likes me,” Yuuri mumbles.

Phichit’s peals of laughter are loud enough that even the blender can’t drown them out.

 

***


	3. Rise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to my wonderful artist [izzyisozaki](https://twitter.com/izzyisozaki) for her art in this chapter and the previous chapter! Her soft way of drawing Victor always makes me so happy. :)

Yuuri expects some resistance from Celestino at the idea of Yuuri switching out his free program for an older one at Nationals. Instead, Celestino looks relieved when Yuuri suggests it. “I’ve been considering that option too,” Celestino says. “The biggest obstacle for you at All-Japan isn’t going to be the other competitors, it’s going to be handling your own nerves. If skating a more familiar program helps you stay confident and focused, that’ll be a good step toward getting the rest of your season back on track.”

Celestino _does_ seem a little dubious when Yuuri tells him which program he’s thinking about performing, though. “If I recall correctly, you struggled with that program all season,” he says.

“Yes,” Yuuri says. “But I was a weaker skater then. I think my skill level now makes it a much better fit.”

Celestino agrees to watch a run-through of _Cloud to Raindrop_ , and Yuuri plugs his phone into the rinkside stereo and takes the ice with a little trepidation. But once Celestino starts the music, Yuuri feels himself relax into it almost immediately. Long-dormant muscle memory starts to guide his movements, and he finds himself trusting it without hesitation. He really had loved this program back when he was first learning it. It tells a story, the way Victor’s programs always do, without any wasted or idle moments. Slow and graceful at first—Yuuri never had any problem with that—and then increasing in speed, in joy, until its hurtling, pell-mell momentum dances right on the edge of chaos. That was where Yuuri always faltered. Three years ago, he hadn’t been strong enough to keep that momentum going, but as the song enters its second half now, he finds himself moving faster and faster with natural ease. _This_ is what Victor had seen when he watched the video of it: not Yuuri’s flawed performance, but the potential lying underneath it. It was a good program in search of a skater who could do it justice.

When the song ends, and Yuuri skates back to the boards panting and drenched in sweat, Celestino has a broad smile on his face. “I haven’t seen you look that comfortable on the ice in weeks,” he says. “That’s exactly the kind of energy I want to see from you at All-Japan. We’d have to change the jump layout, of course, and it needs polish. But I’m open to it, if it’s what you want.”

In that moment Yuuri isn’t even thinking about the fact that Victor asked him to do it. Now he wants to do it for himself—to tell the story he hadn’t been able to tell three years ago.

“Yes,” Yuuri says. “It’s what I want.”

 

***

 

Victor doesn’t hear back from Yuuri until late in the evening, as he’s getting ready for bed:

> Celestino watched me do a run-through of Cloud to Raindrop
> 
> He said he’d support me if I wanted to do it at Nationals

Victor, toothbrush in one hand and phone in the other, feels a surge of excitement. He’d been afraid that Yuuri would refuse to switch out his program on principle alone, after Victor had accidentally over-emphasized its sexiness earlier. He hurriedly scrubs at his teeth, thumb hovering over the phone screen, waiting for the next text to arrive with Yuuri’s answer.

It doesn’t come. Victor frowns and spits toothpaste into the sink. Does that mean Celestino is okay with it, but Yuuri isn’t? He types:

> How do you feel about it?

It takes Yuuri long enough to respond that Victor’s on the last step of his skincare routine before his phone lights up again.

> I really liked skating it again
> 
> I remembered how much I enjoyed practicing it the first time around
> 
> But I see why people criticized it at the time
> 
> It suited my style, but I wasn’t strong enough for it yet
> 
> I think I am now

Another pause. Victor’s hands are wet, so he doesn’t text anything back. He waits and lets Yuuri think.

> I know some people are going to think I’m weak for switching programs
> 
> But today was the first time since the GPF that skating actually felt like fun again
> 
> I missed that
> 
> It feels so much easier when I love it

For some reason, that sends a melancholy pang through Victor. He dries off his hands and picks up his phone.

> Anyone who thinks it’s weak doesn’t know you, Yuuri
> 
> You were right earlier when you said it’s risky to swap a competent program for one that’s less practiced
> 
> I know you would only take that risk if you had the courage of your convictions

Another pause. Yuuri still hasn’t actually said he’ll do it, and the suspense is starting to eat away at Victor. He turns off the bathroom light and goes out to his bedroom. Makkachin is already asleep at the foot of the bed, and Victor climbs under the covers carefully, bending his knees so he doesn’t nudge her.

His phone buzzes:

> I’m taking out all the sexy parts

A warm flush goes through Victor. He grins down at the phone screen and types:

> Impossible! That would eliminate every element from the program except the A-spin
> 
>  
> 
> You don’t like my A-spin?
> 
>  
> 
> You execute it perfectly well!
> 
> But I will never find an A-spin sexy
> 
>  
> 
> Then I’m doing five of them

Victor doesn’t know why Yuuri objects so strongly to being called sexy. He won a _pole-dancing_ competition, for heaven’s sake.

> Yuuri((((((
> 
> My thumbs are starting to hurt from all this texting
> 
> Can I call you?
> 
>  
> 
> Isn’t it almost 10:30 in St. Petersburg?
> 
> You have to sleep

Victor curses himself for ever telling Yuuri what time he goes to bed. But before he can come up with some excuse for staying up, Yuuri says:

> Do you want to Skype again tomorrow at our usual time?

His disappointment at not getting to hear Yuuri’s voice is counterbalanced by the satisfaction of knowing that he and Yuuri have a _usual time_. He types:

> Okay! At the usual time))))
> 
>  
> 
> Okay, I’ll talk to you then
> 
> Good night

Victor reaches over and turns off his lamp. He moves to set his phone on the nightstand, then hesitates. He brings it back and props it up on his chest, opening up his photo gallery. He has a lot of pictures of Yuuri now—dancing in Sochi, on the ice in Detroit—but the one he always gravitates back to is the one Phichit took of Yuuri lying on the couch in their apartment. Yuuri looks so relaxed and comfortable. It always makes Victor think of the way Yuuri had leaned against him in the back of that cab in Sochi: happy, tired, trustingly heavy against his side.

Victor closes his eyes. The memory of Yuuri’s touch is still clear enough in his mind that, if he wants to, he can lift it up and settle it over his skin. The pressure of Yuuri’s head on his shoulder; the warm flutter of Yuuri’s breath against his ear; the soft, tentative press of Yuuri’s hands against his back, holding Victor against him, stopping him from moving away. Victor can almost, _almost_ feel it if he concentrates, like holding a ghost in his arms.

But then a dull ache settles into his chest, like it always does. The two memories are inextricably tangled together: the joy of holding Yuuri close, and the dread of having to let him go. And that ache always lasts longer than the momentary happiness of remembering. When Victor curls up on his side and tries to fall asleep, the ache lingers, making him toss and turn until Makkachin gets up and lies down next to him, pinning him in place with her head on his arm. He doesn’t know if she’s doing it out of compassion or annoyance, but it doesn’t matter. He hugs her close.

The following day passes with tortuous slowness. The problem with waiting to talk to Yuuri until after a full day of practice is that the anticipation makes it harder to concentrate. Yakov gets fed up with him early on and makes him spend the whole morning on edgework, and by the time Victor gets home for Yuuri’s call, his exhaustion is less from physical exertion and more from constantly dragging his wandering mind back into focus.  

But when Yuuri’s face appears on the screen, it’s as good as sinking into a hot bath. “Yuuri! Good morning!” Victor says.

Yuuri has made even less of a pretense than usual in looking like he hasn’t just woken up. His hair is a wild thatch of black. “Good afternoon,” he says, rubbing at his eyes. “How was practice?”

Victor hesitates for a moment. “Tiring,” he says. Then, before Yuuri can read anything into it: “So tell me all about your run-through yesterday! Did you film it? I can’t wait to see—”

“Victor,” Yuuri says, cutting him off. “I have some...” He ducks his head for a moment, then looks back up. “I have some ground rules,” he says, more firmly.

“Oh,” Victor says. He doesn’t like the sound of that.

“You said you wanted me to skate this program for your birthday, right?” Yuuri says. “So that’s when you’ll see it, on your birthday. Not before.”

Victor is not above vocalizing a gasp of betrayal. _“Yuuri!”_

“It wouldn’t be a surprise if you saw me working on it ahead of time,” Yuuri says. “You’ve already seen me skating it badly. The next time you see it, I want to be skating it well.”

It’s such a sweet sentiment that Victor is momentarily stymied by how to argue against it. “Besides,” Yuuri says, sounding a little bolder. “I read that in Russia, it’s bad luck to celebrate your birthday before the day it happens.”

Victor can’t help himself: he puts a tiny bit of flirtiness into his tone. “And just _why_ were you looking up Russian birthday traditions, Yuuri?”

Yuuri’s face goes a little pink. “To win this argument,” he says.

Victor sighs. “Does that mean you don’t want to talk about it with me, either?”

“No!” Yuuri says quickly. “I still want to hear your suggestions. But...I can’t promise I’ll take them. Celestino has his own ideas about how I should update the program.”

Victor kind of wants to argue against _that_ , too, but he doesn’t. He should probably just be grateful that Celestino hasn’t put a stop to all the backseat coaching Victor’s been doing over the last few days. “All right,” he says. Then an idea occurs to him. “But you know, Yuuri, I have a _lot_ of ideas.”

Yuuri gives him a rueful look. “I’m sure you do.”

“Who knows if I’ll even get through them all this morning?” Victor says. “Maybe we could just plan on talking at this hour every day, to make sure there’s time to cover everything. I’ve already moved my appointment with my personal trainer to the evenings all week, so I have it free.”

Yuuri doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Victor’s stomach sinks. As far as excuses go, this is a pretty transparent one. But then: “Are you sure?” Yuuri asks. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“Of course I’m sure!” Victor says. “I’ve really liked talking with you these last few days, Yuuri. It gives me something to look forward to.”

Yuuri smiles. There’s a softness in it that makes Victor’s heart lift. “Okay,” he says. “But it doesn’t have to be every day, if you’re busy. Just tell me if you don’t have time, okay?”

“I will,” Victor promises.

 

***

 

The next week goes by in a disorienting blur. The challenge of relearning and refining an old program eats up so much of Yuuri’s energy that he sleeps like the dead every night. Every morning when he wakes up, he sits down in front of his laptop and calls Victor, and every morning Victor’s handsome, well-rested face laughs at him for looking so tired and out of sorts. “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty!” Victor says on the fourth day. “That’s some excellent height on your hair this morning. Maybe these calls are starting to be too early for you?”

Yuuri blearily examines his hair in his image on the screen: there’s a chunk bent up almost from the roots. “No,” he mumbles, flattening it down. “I’m always like this when I wake up.”

“Someday we should trade!” Victor says. “You can call me right when I wake up and see how high my hair sticks up before I comb it.”

Yuuri pauses, trying to imagine Victor’s crest of silver hair all matted and chunky. “I can’t picture it,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen your hair look bad.”

“No?” Victor says. “Let’s see.” He scoots back in his desk chair, lets his head dip down, and starts to rub his hands vigorously through his hair.

It startles a laugh out of Yuuri. _“Victor,”_ he says. The motion draws Makkachin’s attention too: she appears in the frame and puts her paws up on Victor’s leg, like she’s concerned for his sanity. When Victor drops his hands and lifts his head, there’s a two-second span where his long silver fringe stands up absurdly high, like a flag, before it succumbs to gravity and settles back down over his eye.

“Aw,” Victor says disappointedly. “Your hair must be thicker than mine. Mine just flops down.”

Yuuri takes a moment to appreciate what he’s pretty sure is a rare sight: Victor Nikiforov unkempt. “You still look good though,” Yuuri says, a little disgruntled.

Victor gives him a sidelong smile. “Yuuri, you flatterer,” he says. He leans down and kisses Makkachin’s head before lifting her paws off his leg.

Ever since Yuuri realized that Victor was, in fact, flirting with him, he’s been doing what any sensible person would do in his situation: refusing to think about it until after Nationals. He doesn’t have enough room in his head for a last-minute program change _and_ this utterly baffling development in his personal life. “So tell me about yesterday’s practice!” Victor says, combing his fingers through his mussed hair.

It’s the fourth day since Yuuri started rehearsing the new form of _Cloud to Raindrop_ , and at this point the program’s choreography and layout is pretty well set in place. Now all that’s left is refining it: a tall order, considering he’s getting on a plane to perform it in a few days. Since Yuuri isn’t letting Victor watch any practice footage, there’s only so much they have to talk about, and after fifteen minutes Yuuri’s pretty much run out of things to say. But Victor doesn’t ever want to end the call early; he just shifts the conversation to new topics. “You must’ve met my rinkmate Georgi at some point, right?” he asks.

“I’ve competed against him before,” Yuuri says. “I don’t think we’ve ever spoken.”

“He has a wonderful sense of the dramatic,” Victor says. “His theme this season is _true love_ , and today he swept into Yakov’s office looking very tragic and said _‘I’m changing this season’s theme to 'heartbreak''_ and then swept back out again. That’s his way of saying he’s fighting with his girlfriend. Poor Yakov was right in the middle of giving me an angry lecture, and it ruined his momentum.”

“Why was he giving you an angry lecture?” Yuuri asks, a little indignant.

“Oh, the usual reasons,” Victor says, waving his hand dismissively. “So now Georgi says he—”

Yuuri’s stomach chooses that moment to growl loudly. It must’ve been loud enough for the microphone to pick up, because Victor pauses. “Was that you?” he asks.

“Sorry,” Yuuri says. “I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

Now Victor’s the one who looks indignant. “Yuuri!” he says. “You shouldn’t wait so long after waking up to eat! Why don’t you go get something now?”

Yuuri’s a little surprised. Victor has never voluntarily cut one of their calls short before. “Okay,” he says. “If you’re sure.”

“Of course!” Victor says. “I wanted to see what the rest of your apartment looks like, anyway.”

Oh. Victor doesn’t want to end the call—he wants to be physically conveyed to whatever new room Yuuri ends up in. That makes a lot more sense. “Um, all right,” Yuuri says. He unplugs his laptop from the wall. “Be nice, though, our apartment’s not as put-together as yours. We don’t have any designer chairs.”

Victor gives him a wounded look. “Yuuri, that chair is a piece of _art_. Art can be chairs!”

Yuuri picks up his laptop and points it away from himself so Victor can’t see him smile. Victor has a long list of banquet-related topics he can tease Yuuri about, so learning that Victor owns a chair that’s also a coat rack that’s also a...tree branch?...has given Yuuri some teasing ammunition of his own. “Okay, sorry if this is bumpy,” Yuuri says, and stands up. He walks over to his bedroom door, opens it, and goes into the hall.

Victor makes appreciative _hmm_ noises at the sight of Yuuri’s apartment as they head toward the kitchen. “I like it!” he says. “It looks very cozy.”

“You can just say _small._ ”

“But in a good way,” Victor says, and to his credit, he sounds sincere. “Oh, and look! That’s your couch!”

Yuuri’s not sure why he sounds so enthusiastic about their battered old Craigslist couch. “Uh, yeah,” he says. He goes into the kitchen and sets the laptop on the kitchen table. “I’m going to make some cereal. Um, what were you saying about Georgi?”

So Victor regales Yuuri with the details of how Georgi wants to excise the romance from his programs—“he refuses to do a triple loop now, he says it’s _her_ jump”—and Yuuri cuts up a banana into a bowl of cereal and starts eating. It is profoundly odd to be sitting at his own kitchen table, eating his normal breakfast, while Victor Nikiforov’s familiar cadence addresses him through the laptop screen. Yuuri has sat down in this exact spot and watched interviews with Victor before—interviews that never included repeated instances of the word _“Yuuri!”_

After a few minutes, Yuuri hears the click of Phichit’s door opening. “I thought I heard talking,” Phichit says, sticking his head out. “Is Victor Nikiforov in our kitchen? Do I need to put pants on?”

“Hi Phichit!” Victor calls out. “Only if you’re shy.”

Phichit deliberates, then ducks back into his room and comes back a moment later with sweatpants on over his boxers. “I think I’ll leave something to the imagination,” he says. “I’m not as comfortable with celebrities seeing me in my underwear as Yuuri is.”

_“Phichit-kun,”_ Yuuri grumbles, his mouth full.

“Did I hear you talking about poor Georgi?” Phichit asks, taking the blender out of a cabinet. 

“Yes!” Victor says, surprised. “Do you know him?”

“We talked for a little bit during the Finlandia Trophy last year,” Phichit says. “I’ve been following him on Instagram since then. I don’t speak Russian, obviously, but the auto-translate of his captions was pretty bleak this morning. I think he’s posting song lyrics?”

“Oh no,” Victor says, pulling out his phone to look. “He might be composing poetry. That’s a bad sign.”

If it was an odd feeling for Yuuri to be sitting in his own kitchen listening to Victor talk to him, it is ten times odder to be sitting in his own kitchen listening to Victor and Phichit cheerfully gossiping about other skaters. Yuuri’s life, like his apartment, has always been rather small, and it seems absurd that Victor would find it worthwhile to shrink himself down enough to fit inside it. But as Yuuri finishes eating, and Phichit gives Victor an impromptu smoothie-making demo, Victor’s attention doesn’t waver from either of them, not even once.

When it comes time to end the call, Victor says, like he’s said every day this week: “So we’ll talk again tomorrow? At the usual time?”

“Okay,” Yuuri says. “The usual time.”

 

***

 

The two of them end up leaving for their respective Nationals on the same day. It’s remarkably similar to the day they left Sochi: Victor has a three-hour flight to Yekaterinburg ahead of him, and Yuuri has an eighteen-hour flight to Japan. “Poor Yuuri,” Victor says when they Skype for the final time that week. “America’s so inconveniently placed, isn’t it?”

“You get used to it,” Yuuri says.

His voice is oddly flat. Victor leans in and examines Yuuri’s image on the screen more closely. For the first time in almost a week, Yuuri’s hair was already combed before he called—Victor finds himself missing its messy, exuberant height—and his posture is stiff instead of sleepy. His eyes look a little bloodshot, too. “How long have you been awake?” Victor asks.

“I didn’t really sleep.”

“Ah,” Victor says. “Nervous?”

Yuuri nods.

“I don’t think you need to be,” Victor says. “You said your programs were going well yesterday.”

“They are,” Yuuri says. “It doesn’t matter. I’m always like this before a competition.”

There’s a hint of bitterness in his voice. _That_ _’s_ remarkably similar to the day they left Sochi, too. Victor hasn’t heard that tone in Yuuri’s voice since they were both in Russia, and he can’t say he’s missed it. “Hmm,” Victor says. “Maybe you could use some cheering up!” He picks up his phone. “I have a cute picture of Makkachin I can show you. I was going to send it to you right before the competition started, but let’s be honest, I was never going to be able to wait that long.”

He texts it to Yuuri, and he sees Yuuri pick up his phone and look at it. It’s a picture of Makkachin lying on her back with her paws in the air—objectively her cutest pose—and draped over her front is a pink cloth banner emblazoned with three words in sparkly silver letters: **_Yuuri Katsuki! Fight!_**

Yuuri makes an undignified choking noise. “Oh my _God_ ,” he says. “Victor, where did you get that?”

“There’s a store that sells fan banners for you online!” Victor says. “Illegally, I think. You might want to have your people look into that. Makkachin wanted to make sure you knew she was supporting you at Nationals this week!”

Yuuri stares down at his phone for a long moment and doesn’t say anything. Then he nudges his glasses up a little and wipes underneath his eyes. “Tell her thank you for me,” he says quietly.

Victor feels a little of that dull ache rise up in his chest. It’s the unfairest thing in the world that Yuuri is both right in front of his eyes and 7000 kilometers too far away to hug. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Yuuri resettles his glasses on his face, and there’s a strain in his expression that Victor doesn’t like. “Victor,” he says. “I need to tell you something.”

Victor doesn’t like the sound of that. “Okay?”

“Do you remember, back in Sochi,” Yuuri says, “how I asked you to only watch my good performances?”

Victor still feels a little guilty at how he’d stretched that definition. “And I did!” he says. “Mostly.”

“No, I know you did,” Yuuri says. “Because I don’t—I don’t think you realize just how badly I can perform when I let my nerves get to me.”

Victor hesitates. “Even worse than Sochi?”

Yuuri huffs ruefully. “No,” he says. “Sochi was definitely the worst. But...” He breaks eye contact, ducking his head. “Victor, I said I would skate this free program for you, and I really don’t want to disappoint you. But I need you to know that...I might.”

It gives Victor an unpleasant jolt to realize that Yuuri’s distress is because of _him_. “Oh, Yuuri,” Victor says hurriedly. “I only asked you to skate it for me to be...playful, you know? Please don’t be worried about what I think.”

“I can’t help it,” Yuuri says. “Your skating has meant so much to me, for such a long time, and you’ve given me so much of your time and support these last few weeks. I want—” He looks down at the image of Makkachin on his phone. “I want to be worthy of your enthusiasm. But I don’t know if I am.”

It really is like the day they left Sochi all over again: Yuuri’s back to using words like _worthy,_ trying to haltingly articulate all those obscure inner rules he’s constructed around his own success. “Yuuri,” Victor says, more firmly this time. “I know you have this certain idea in your head about what it means to be...worthy, or deserving, or whatever. But I’m not a part of that, okay? I’m still going to like you whether you win or lose.”

Yuuri doesn’t look at him. His posture radiates _unconvinced._ “Yuuri, all that time we spent talking this week was also _you_ giving your time to _me,_ _”_ Victor says. “What if the opposite happens? If I go to my Nationals and end up skating the worst performance of my career, are you going to stop liking me?”

Yuuri’s eyes flick up, almost offended. “Of course not!”

“Do you promise?” Victor asks. “Because my quad-toe-triple-toe at the end of _Stammi vicino_ still hasn’t come back. There’s a good chance I’m going to end that program in a splat on the ice.”

He sees the corner of Yuuri’s mouth tick up in a faint, reluctant smile. “Yuuri, of _course_ I want to see you win,” Victor says. “I know you’re capable of it, and I love watching you skate when you’re at your best. But if I can’t see you win, I still want to see _you_.” An idea occurs to him. “Yuuri, if the absolute worst happens, and it’s Sochi all over again, and you don’t get chosen for Worlds, I’m going to send you a plane ticket to come see me and Makkachin in St. Petersburg.”

Yuuri raises his eyebrows, then gives a rusty laugh. “I wouldn’t accept it.”

“You’d have to,” Victor says. “Because every time you didn’t use it, I’d just buy you another one, and another one, until the sheer wastefulness of it finally guilt-tripped you into coming.”

Yuuri’s smile reluctantly grows. “See?” Victor says triumphantly. “You know I’d do it.”

Yuuri tips his glasses up off his nose and rubs at his eyes again. “Victor,” he says, and the soft familiarity in his voice makes Victor’s heart race. “You’re very nice.”

And as much as hearing that fills Victor with warmth, he can’t let it go by uncorrected. “No,” Victor says. “I’m selfish. I really, really want to see you again. It’s killing me that you look so sad and I can’t hug you.”

“Where’s Makkachin?” Yuuri asks. “She can be my stand-in.”

Makkachin is lying on the couch, and she only needs a little convincing to come over to where Victor is seated at the desk. She sits down and looks up at Victor. “You’re Yuuri,” he informs her, and leans down and hugs her. He hears the enthusiastic sweep of her tail against the floor, and she starts licking the side of his face.

“Oh! Your kisses are very wet, Yuuri,” Victor says. “We’ll need to work on that at Worlds.”

“Oh my God,” Yuuri says, but his voice sounds fond.

 

***

 

Victor’s blue silk tie is thicker than Yuuri’s old polyester one, and it takes Yuuri a few tries before his nervous fingers get the knot right. After sitting in Yuuri’s suitcase with his other clothes for two international trips, it no longer smells like Victor, but there’s still the faintest note of champagne if he brings it close to his nose. Yuuri straightens his suit jacket, gives himself a final once-over in the mirror, and goes back out into the hotel room he’s sharing with Celestino.

“Excellent!” Celestino says when he sees him. “You look very good. Are you ready to go?”

“Could you take a picture of me, first?” Yuuri asks, holding out his phone. “I want to update my Instagram.”

Yuuri writes the caption and posts it from the back of their cab:

> **katsuki-yuu** Thank you for your support as I compete in the All-Japan National Championships this week! I’m currently in the process of refining and improving my free program for the rest of the season, so I’ve decided to skate an older program during this competition. It’s one of my lesser known programs, and I previously struggled with it due to inexperience, but I hope the strength and skill I’ve achieved since then will allow me to perform it for you properly this time.

The post has been live for less than two minutes when Yuuri gets a flood of texts from Victor:

> Yuuri!!!
> 
> You finally updated your Instagram!
> 
> Love the tie)))))
> 
> HATE the suit, but love the tie

Yuuri isn’t sure whether to laugh or be annoyed by that all-caps _HATE_. He types back:

> Why do you hate my suit?
> 
>  
> 
> It’s not sexy enough!

Oh, God. Of course that’s why.

> I’m going to an event for my skating federation
> 
> I really don’t think I should look sexy
> 
>  
> 
> Okay, first of all, you should always look sexy
> 
> Second of all, who do I contact to get your measurements?

Yuuri looks up from his phone with a faint smile. Victor _sounds_ like he’s joking, but the expensive tie currently around Yuuri’s neck is proof that he’s absolutely not.

> If you buy me a suit, I’m throwing it in the trash along with all of those plane tickets
> 
>  
> 
> Yuuri!!!
> 
> :,( :,(
> 
> You made me so sad I had to look up how to make a crying face
> 
>  
> 
> Should you be on your phone? Don’t you have a practice session around now?
> 
>  
> 
> It’s in an hour, we’re heading down to the car in a few minutes
> 
> I hate how much our schedules overlap! We’re not going to have any time to talk to each other(((((
> 
> But at least you’re performing ahead of me, so I can watch you live!
> 
>  
> 
> I’m going to try to watch you live
> 
> But if interviews go too long I might not be able to
> 
> ((((
> 
>  
> 
> Don’t worry about me
> 
> I’ll skate with the reassurance that your eyes are waiting for me in the future)))

 

***

 

Victor ends up watching Yuuri’s short program on his phone while he’s doing his warm-up stretches, trying to block out the sound of other skaters and their teams talking nearby. Yakov makes a single futile attempt to discourage Victor from distracting himself, then leaves him alone to go deal with Georgi. Georgi’s fight with his girlfriend had turned into a breakup sometime during the three-hour flight to Yekaterinburg, and now his dramatics have settled into a flat, alarming depression. Victor feels faintly guilty as he watches Yakov sit down next to Georgi and put a gruffly consoling arm around him.

There’s a swell of cheering on the All-Japan livestream, and Victor looks back to see that Yuuri is about to take the ice. Victor pulls abruptly out of his stretch and holds his phone close to his face. The audience _loves_ Yuuri: Victor hasn’t heard cheers that loud for anyone else, and the stands are awash with multi-colored fan banners. Yuuri waves to the crowd, a little perfunctorily, his face expressionless. As he goes into his initial pose, Victor feels an unexpected twinge of nervousness. It’s stronger than anything he’s felt before his own performances in years.

Then the music starts—thin, sprightly trills of piccolo—and Yuuri’s whole body seems to awaken. He raises one arm in a graceful arc and moves forward, his takeoff so perfectly aligned with the melody that, for a moment, it’s like the music is spilling out of the slice his blade makes across the ice. Victor’s nervousness starts to fade as he registers the confidence in Yuuri’s posture, the quick precision of his movements. He holds his breath as Yuuri gears up for his first jump—then exhales with relief as Yuuri lands a buoyant, exhilarating triple Axel.

It’s Yuuri’s first moment back in the spotlight since his disappointment at the Grand Prix Final, and it’s as if Sochi never happened. There’s no sign of the nervous distraction he’d displayed in the practice video he sent Victor two weeks ago. The only mistake he makes in the entire program is a brief hand down during his quad Salchow—a jump that no one else in that arena is even close to landing. When Yuuri hits his final pose, arms stretched wide and chin lifted, Victor feels a flush of pride from his head down to his toes.

When Yuuri arrives at the kiss and cry, he accepts a juice box from Celestino and takes a long, ravenous pull. Celestino is grinning and talking rapidly, but there’s no audio to hear what he’s saying. Victor watches Yuuri’s lips, and when he’s done with his juice box, the first sentence out of his mouth is exactly what Victor thought it would be:

“ _I touched down on the quad Salchow._ _”_

Because if there’s one thing Victor knows about Yuuri Katsuki, it’s that he can stage a triumphant comeback with a world-class performance, and still walk away unsatisfied.

 

***

 

The interviews after the short program go on forever. Eventually it’s Celestino who intervenes, insisting in his loudest, most boisterous tone that Yuuri has to leave to get ready for the next day. The Japanese press stands no chance against his overbearing jovialness, and soon Yuuri is hurriedly changing and packing up his gear and getting into a cab.

“You were starting to look a little frayed at the edges,” Celestino says on the drive back to the hotel. He glances down at Yuuri’s hands, and Yuuri realizes he’s tapping his nails against the back of his phone in a quick, nervous staccato. He stops and presses the button to power his phone back on.

He has a flood of congratulatory texts from everyone he knows, and he reads them all without quite managing to internalize any of them. Victor, of course, sent nine:

> Gorgeous, wonderful, beautiful, magnificent))))))))))))))
> 
> (I just realized those words apply to both you AND your short program!)
> 
> It was so amazing to see you in front of a home crowd
> 
> Everyone there loved you so much!
> 
> People in Japan have very good taste))))))
> 
> Just finished with mine!
> 
> There’s no rush to watch it if you haven’t already, it’s probably my weakest version so far
> 
> I wasn’t quite...in sync? Emotionally? At the beginning
> 
> You'll see what I mean when you watch

Yuuri immediately puts his earbuds in and finds a video of it online. Sure enough, Victor’s energy for the first minute of the program is very slightly off. He doesn’t quite achieve those grace notes he’s so well known for: his emotive facial expressions, his beautiful posture. But he lands all his jumps cleanly, and Yuuri can _see_ the moment when he locks back into his groove, his face illuminating under the sweep of his silver hair. He finishes the performance just as strongly as he has all season, and in the kiss-and-cry he submits very meekly to Yakov’s thunderous criticisms, moving his attention away only briefly at the announcement of his first-place score.

Some of the nervous tension inside Yuuri softens. It’s a little nice, actually, to know that Victor struggles sometimes too. Even if his version of struggling _still_ ends up giving him a score twenty points higher than Yuuri’s.

 

***

 

Victor’s birthday, like most of his birthdays, ends up being one of the least important things to be happening to him that day. He wakes up to a nice collection of texts and Instagram DMs—Chris’s just says **_Ah, the cruelty of time is that it moves ever-onward,_** that ass—and a message from Yuuri that can only be described as _characteristic:_

> Happy birthday Victor!
> 
> Please watch me tonight and know that I’m thinking of you
> 
> I’m going to try my hardest to do justice to what you saw in this program

In some ways it’s good that he and Yuuri are both performing within hours of each other, because getting ready for his own free skate helps distract Victor from the steadily growing nervousness that’s filling his stomach. Not for himself—for Yuuri. Victor doesn’t see the point in being nervous about his own programs; over the years he’s developed a very good sense of what he’s going to be capable of delivering on the ice. Tonight he’s going to switch out the quad-toe-triple-toe, because he knows he won’t land it cleanly. His fitness level has slipped a small amount since the Grand Prix Final, and he knows he’s going to get tired earlier on in the program. The audience is ultimately not going to get as good a program out of him as he’d like, but if he leans harder into the performance and interpretation aspects, hopefully they’ll stay engaged and forgive him for it.

But everything about Yuuri is unknown and out of his reach. By the time the last group of Men’s skaters is scheduled to start at All-Japan, Victor can’t even pretend to be doing his warm-up stretches. He finds a quiet corner in one of the backstage halls and huddles there with his phone in hand, his stomach churning. Yuuri is about to go in front of a crowd of thousands and skate _Cloud to Raindrop_ for him— _because_ of him. He, Victor, is personally responsible for what Yuuri Katsuki is about to do out there on the ice. He already knew that abstractly, but it isn’t until now that he feels the overwhelming weight of it: his decisions, made at a distance, are going to permanently impact Yuuri’s career.

He wonders if all coaches feel this existential heaviness as they watch their students take the ice.

Yuuri skates out wearing a simple shirt-and-trousers combo he’d worn in an ice show last year. The original costume, Yuuri had told Victor, no longer fit in the thighs after three years of training quads—a mental image that Victor has been privately cherishing ever since. Yuuri waves to the audience, and today his expression isn’t quite so impassive: Victor can see the tension in the muscles of his forehead, the tightness in the set of his jaw.

Yuuri takes his starting pose, his uplifted arms forming beautiful curves. They’re firm; they don’t shake or tremble. When the music begins, he rotates slowly out of his initial position, and the line his body makes—long outstretched leg, gently arched back, high supplicating arms—is so perfect that Victor feels it like a stab through the heart. It is the most unfair thing in the world that Victor has to watch this on a phone screen from thousands of miles away.

_Cloud to Raindrop_ starts with an air of grandeur—the heavens filling with black stormclouds, heavy and sweeping. The first time Victor watched this program, he’d been reminded of the choreography Lilia had created for him when he was younger, stately and balletic. Three years ago, Yuuri had excelled in this portion; today he moves through it with seeming effortlessness, as though he’d been practicing it for weeks instead of days. His first jump is a frisson of lightning—a triple Axel, not quite as high as the one he’d landed in his short program, which is the first sign to Victor’s eyes that he’s nervous. Then two lightning strikes in quick succession—triple Lutz, triple toe loop, perfect—and then the spreading rumble of thunder with a wonderfully formed flying sit spin.

His first quad is the inflection point in the song: the moment when the stormclouds crack open and let out their torrent of rain. Victor had suggested the quad toe loop—had actually suggested that Yuuri leave out his quad Salchow altogether, since he didn’t need the points, and a fumbled landing might end up shaking his confidence. So when he sees Yuuri shift into position, clearly about to do a Salchow, Victor finally gets a taste of the aggravation that must characterize Yakov’s entire life. Yuuri launches—good rotation—lands—and just _barely_ keeps his hands off the ice, sweeping them up like he’s avoiding a hot stove.

“Yes!” Victor exclaims, his voice echoing in the empty hall. There’s clear relief on Yuuri’s face as he enters the second half the program, as the music shifts and turns faster. Now the rain is streaking from the sky, separated from the heavy stormcloud, and the choreography becomes more modern, more organic. Now Yuuri’s jumps are meant to express the joy of speed—Victor’s lungs vicariously ache for him as he gets through several buoyant triples—clean—and his quad toe loop—clean—and his quad-toe-double-toe— _clean._ And then, without nearly enough time to catch his breath, Yuuri sweeps into the focal point of the entire program: his step sequence.

Now the conglomeration of rain, streaking through the sky in sheets, hits the ground as raindrops: fast staccato plinking that somehow Yuuri is keeping time with, that somehow Yuuri seems to be _generating,_ sound radiating from the movement of his feet and the quickly changing positions of his arms. And his expression is _alive_ as his body moves: rapturous, captivated by his own momentum. Victor remembers what Yuuri said before— _it_ _’s so much easier when I love it—_ and it’s clear that he loves it, that in that moment Yuuri’s doing exactly what he wants to do.

The final section of the program follows the bouncing path of a single raindrop—the _plink-plink-plink_ of his combination jump almost ends in disaster, as Yuuri barely saves the landing on the double flip at the end. And then the last spin turns the drop to vapor, carries it back up into the air, until Yuuri’s final pose leaves him with his arms uplifted again, his fingers spread: grasping for the heavens.

_He did it._ Victor’s chest is aching: pride and happiness and longing all mixed together, the pain inextricable from the joy. Yuuri manages to hold onto his final pose just past the point where the music ends and the audience starts roaring, and then he collapses into a panting heap on the ice. Flowers and stuffed toys start raining down from the stands. It takes Yuuri several seconds to catch his breath enough to finally lift his head, and when he does, he looks up at the audience and _laughs_ , with almost disbelieving joy.

It's breathtaking to witness. For the first time since Victor met him, Yuuri Katsuki finally looks _satisfied_.

Then his radiant, upturned face abruptly disappears. A text alert pops up on Victor's phone screen:

> WHERE ARE YOU?

It’s from Yakov. Victor feels a brief flare of outrage—imagine if he had texted that twenty seconds earlier, right at the program’s climactic moment!—but it quickly fades into guilt. Victor only has experience with _one_ aggravating student; it must be a nightmare to have four of them all at the same time.

He starts walking back down the hall, swiping away Yakov’s text and opening a new one to Yuuri. His fingers hesitate over the screen. What can he say to Yuuri in the thirty seconds he has before his phone is summarily confiscated? Can he just say _I love you_? No, because then Yuuri will think he loves him for his skating, when Victor loves him for his _everything_ : his gorgeous skating, his raging inner fire, his self-doubt and self-criticism and that brief, transcendent moment when he finally allowed himself to experience the joy of his own success. Victor can’t fit all _that_ into a text.

So he resorts to an old standby:

> ))))))))))
> 
> ))))))))))))))))))))))
> 
> )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
> 
> )))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
> 
> I’ll see you at Worlds, Yuuri!!!!!!!!

 

***

 

The first time they Skype after returning home, Victor leans into the camera and says, with glee, “Let me see your medal!”

“Why?” Yuuri asks, wrinkling his nose.

“Because I helped you get it! I want to look at it and feel very self-satisfied.”

Yuuri goes to his suitcase and takes the gold medal out of its box. He sits back down at his desk and, feeling a little idiotic, dangles it in front of the camera. “Oh, it’s _nice_ ,” Victor says with satisfaction. “Perfect size, too. Not a ruble, but not a dinner plate, either.”

Yuuri hadn’t realized they were going to admire the medal for its own aesthetic value. “Would it mean less to you if it were bigger or smaller?”

"No," Victor says. “But my Yuuri deserves the best!”

Heat rises into Yuuri’s face. He'd told himself he’d think about Victor’s flirting and what it meant after Nationals, but six in the morning is _too early_. “Where’s _your_ medal?” he asks.

Victor waves that away with a brisk hand. “It’s the weakest gold I’ve won in years. We won’t speak of it.”

Only Victor Nikiforov would be tactless enough to call a gold that outscored Yuuri's by thirty-five points _weak_. “Your free program wasn't weak," Yuuri says. "Or are you regretting switching out the quad-triple at the end?”

“I regret that I’m not able to land it right now,” Victor says. “But pulling it was the right choice.” His face grows suddenly stern. “And do you know why? Because Yakov told me I should, and I _listen_ to my coach.”

Yuuri almost laughs outright. “Since when?”

“Since I experienced the pain and aggravation of seeing my own student ignore my advice on live television.”

Yuuri has to think for a moment to figure out what he’s talking about. “Do you mean me?”

“You and your quad Salchow, yes!”

Oh, that’s right. Both Victor and Celestino had tried to convince him to take the quad Sal out of his free program. “Well, I landed it, didn’t I?” Yuuri says.

Victor’s sternness melts. “Yes, you did,” he says, his eyes warm. Then, with the suddenness of a flipped switch, he straightens in his seat. “All right, my troublesome student. You’re sure you want to go back to this season’s free program for Four Continents?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says firmly. “I want to finally get it right.”

“Then we have a lot of work to do!” Victor says. “Did you take notes when I critiqued the program last time? Maybe I should scan the notes I wrote and send them to you. Oh, wait, you don’t read Cyrillic. Well—”

“Victor,” Yuuri groans. “I only got home ten hours ago. My brain is too fried for eighteen pages of Cyrillic criticism.”

Victor looks wounded. “It's only three pages.”

“Let’s talk about it tomorrow,” Yuuri says. “Today let’s just...relax.” He can feel his empty stomach starting to grumble. “Do you want to come have breakfast with me?”

For a second Victor doesn't answer. His eyebrows lift, like he's surprised.

Then his smile illuminates his entire face. _“Yuuri,”_ he says. “Do you even have to ask?”

***


	4. Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies that it took so long for this chapter to come out - it ended up being a behemoth. Thank you once again to my patient, supportive, and brilliant artist [izzyisozaki](https://twitter.com/izzyisozaki), who created *three* pieces for this chapter! The first two are currently in draft form, but all three make me so happy with their softness and affection. <3
> 
> I originally intended the last chapter of the story to be an epilogue, but given the various changes I ended up making in earlier chapters, it's going to end up being closer to a regular-length chapter instead.
> 
>  **Updated Author's Note, 4-29-19:** I will need to delay posting for a short while as I'm recovering from a cold. My apologies!

It always takes Yuuri a few minutes to fully wake up at the start of their daily Skype call. Victor doesn’t mind at all: sleepy Yuuri mumbles to himself in Japanese and says Victor’s name with a cute extra syllable at the end. Sleepy Yuuri never seems to care if Victor just sits there quietly on the other end of the call, admiring him, as Yuuri lugs his laptop out to the kitchen and goes about making his breakfast. Today Victor watches Yuuri dump a handful of blueberries into his bowl of cereal and start eating, his lips growing bluer and bluer with every bite, and twice Victor opens his mouth to say _I love you_ and only manages to hold it back through incredible force of will. He knows he shouldn’t say it yet. Yuuri always moves slower than he does, takes longer to get comfortable, and right now things are going so well that Victor doesn’t want to risk startling him away.

Victor recognizes the moment when Yuuri actually, officially wakes up: he notices Victor staring at him and says, with his mouth full, “What are you looking at?”

“Your lips are blue,” Victor informs him.

Yuuri swallows and leans in to look at his image on the screen. When he opens his mouth, his teeth and tongue are tinged blue, too. “Oh,” he says, sitting back. “I don’t usually eat blueberries. I stole them from Phichit.”

“How is Phichit?” Victor asks. “He’s barely posted anything to Instagram these last few days. I was starting to get worried.”

“He’s fine,” Yuuri says, taking another bite. “He’s great, actually. Celestino said he could do _Shall We Skate_ for his short program next season, so he’s been on his laptop non-stop trying to edit the song down himself.”

Victor wrinkles his nose in dismay. “Don’t let him see you make that face,” Yuuri warns, pointing his cereal spoon at Victor. “ _The King and the Skater_ is his favorite movie of all time.”

“Can’t he at least do a different song from it?” Victor asks. “One that hasn’t already been done a million times?”

“He wants his performance to be the one that everyone remembers,” Yuuri says. “No one from Thailand’s ever done it before, even though most of the movie’s set there, so he feels like he has a special connection to it.”

“Hmm,” Victor says. “I guess I understand that.” He mulls it over. “He has the energy to pull it off, at least. And the right sense of showmanship.” He taps his hands thoughtfully against his desk. “I suppose if anyone could give it a fresh perspective, he could. All right, you can tell him he has my blessing.”

“I’m sure he was worried,” Yuuri says dryly.

“I’ve actually been listening to some songs for next season, too!” Victor says. “I found a couple of promising ones that I think you’ll like.”

A look of faint suspicion passes over Yuuri’s face. “Songs for you?”

“No, songs for you,” Victor says.

 _“Victor,”_ Yuuri says, exasperated. “Europeans is in a _week._ You should be focusing on that!”

“I am!” Victor protests. “I have to rest sometimes, right? So I’ve been listening to music.”

He doesn’t mention all the notes he’s been taking about potential choreography for Yuuri, too. He knows Yuuri wouldn’t take it the right way. For the last few years, Victor’s found it more and more difficult to make his own programs feel fresh and surprising, but thinking about choreography for Yuuri has been _fun._ Even just the process of fine-tuning his current free skate has been fun. There’s something very satisfying about watching Yuuri’s practice videos now and seeing all the spots where Yuuri’s taken his advice, giving physicality to Victor’s abstract imagination. It’s almost worth the aggravation of those instances when Yuuri decides to take the advice of his _actual_ coach instead. It’s not like Celestino is bad at his job, but Victor finds himself perpetually frustrated by how generic his suggestions always are, instead of being tailored to Yuuri’s unique strengths.

Maybe that’s not fair. After all, Celestino has multiple skaters to worry about, while Victor’s only thinking about Yuuri. But doesn’t Yuuri deserve a coach who can dedicate as much time and thought to him as possible?

“Mm!” Yuuri says, a note of realization in his voice. “I forgot to tell you. I got the pictures back from the Piedmont photoshoot yesterday.”

Victor perks up. After Yuuri’s success at All-Japan, he’d gotten a new sponsorship offer from a nutritional supplement company, and last week they had sent a photographer out to Detroit to take some promotional photos. “How did they turn out?” Victor asks.

Yuuri hesitates. “Fine?”

Given Yuuri’s tendency toward self-criticism, they must be the best pictures of Yuuri ever taken. “Send them to me!” Victor says, picking up his phone in anticipation.

There are six photos in total, all showing Yuuri doing various forms of exercise. They’re quite good: the photographer captured a strong sense of dynamic motion in all of them, and Yuuri isn’t photoshopped beyond all recognition, either. “Oh!” Victor says when he gets to the last picture. “This one of you on the stair-stepper! It’s...”

It might be the most lovingly composed shot of Yuuri’s ass in athletic pants that Victor’s ever seen. It gives Victor a jealous twinge to realize that somewhere in the world, there’s a photographer who loves Yuuri’s ass just as much as he does. “That’s, um, definitely my new wallpaper,” Victor says, saving it to his phone.

As recently as a week ago, Yuuri probably would’ve groaned or complained at hearing a comment like that. But today Yuuri just tips his head to the side and gives Victor a little look. “Yeah, I thought you’d like that one,” he says.

Victor blinks at him. Then sudden heat rises up in his face: that was _unmistakably_ flirty. Over the last few days, Yuuri’s been getting bolder when Victor flirts with him, and every time he does it, Victor goes from suave to tongue-tied in two seconds flat. As much as Victor loves Yuuri’s moments of bashfulness, his moments of boldness...do things to him.

On the screen, he sees a little crease start to form on Yuuri’s forehead. Victor realizes with a jolt that it’s his turn to talk. Oh God, how long has he just been sitting there, staring? “Um!” Victor says, clearing his throat. “So!” He reaches across his desk and grabs his notebook. “I have notes on the video you sent me yesterday. Why don’t we—why don’t we go over that? Right now?”

Talking about skating puts Victor on slightly firmer ground. Yuuri listens attentively, seemingly unaware of the way he keeps rocking the foundations of Victor’s world. A hopeful voice in the back of Victor’s mind says that maybe Yuuri’s flirting is a sign that he can finally tell Yuuri he loves him—a voice that Victor very sensibly ignores. Imagine poor Yuuri taking a month and a half to get comfortable enough for a few flirtatious remarks, only for Victor to immediately blast him with the firehose of _I love you._

But Yuuri’s newfound boldness still gives Victor a feeling of warm satisfaction, and it’s so nice that it even softens the blow of Yuuri giving him some truly terrible news at the end of the call. “I have that TV interview tomorrow morning, remember,” Yuuri says. “I’m not going to be able to call you.”

Victor makes a passionately disgruntled face. “I know,” Yuuri says. “I wish I didn’t have to do it either. I don’t even like doing interviews when they’re in person, let alone with a video delay.”

On the one hand, it’s very good for Yuuri’s career that he’s getting new sponsorship deals and increased media attention after his success at All-Japan. As his unpaid shadow coach, Victor should be very happy that Yuuri’s finally getting some of the recognition he deserves. But Victor feels a truculent weight settle in his stomach at the thought of all those television viewers getting to see Yuuri tomorrow morning when _he_ can’t. “They had to pick _this_ hour, of all hours,” Victor grouses.

“I know,” Yuuri agrees. “It’s _ours._ _”_

And—Victor doesn’t know if that counts as flirting, but it makes his heart beat faster anyway. _Ours._ It’s a small word, but the fact that Yuuri’s the one using it makes it feel momentous. Victor’s been saying things like _ours_ and _us_ and _you and me_ since the night of the banquet, but Yuuri’s always been more reticent. The fact that he’s using the word now, so lightly and easily, feels like another huge step forward.

“I’m going to miss you tomorrow,” Victor says. He tries to keep his voice light, because they’re only missing a day, and it feels childish to be so petulant over only a day.

“I’ll text you when the interview’s done and tell you how it went,” Yuuri promises.

After they hang up, Victor goes through the rest of his day carrying around an odd mixture of emotion: satisfaction leavened with bittersweet. Why is it _always_ like that—the good interwoven with the bad? Ever since he hugged Yuuri goodbye in Sochi, it’s become the rule of his life. The joy of talking to Yuuri every day gets all mixed up with the longing of wanting to see him in person. The excitement he feels when Yuuri texts him gets all mixed up with the disappointment of Yuuri’s long silences, when he’s sleeping or practicing or just too busy to talk. Meeting Yuuri has put more happiness into Victor’s life than he can ever remember feeling, but it never seems to show up pure. It’s cloudy every time, filled with sediment.

Victor finishes out the routine of his day: a session with his personal trainer, dinner, a long walk with Makkachin. When he gets ready for bed, he feels tired enough that he thinks he’ll drop off quickly, which is a relief. Tomorrow, long and Yuuri-less, stretches in front of him like a marathon to be run.

But when he’s settled under the covers, he has a little moment of weakness. He knows it’s not a good idea to try and recall the feeling of Yuuri’s arms around him; it only ever lasts for a moment, the ghostly sensation almost tangible against his skin, and then for a long time afterward it makes him feel melancholy. But he’s tired just then, and his willpower is weak. He closes his eyes and searches inside his mind for those familiar sense-memories: Yuuri’s head against his shoulder, Yuuri’s arms around his back, Yuuri’s breath against his ear.

He can’t find them.

He opens his eyes for a moment, blinking up at the ceiling. Then he closes his eyes and tries again: reaching into his mind, the way he’s done countless times before, to lift up those staticky wisps of memory and settle them over his skin.

There’s nothing there. It’s been too long; the memory in his head, when he reaches for it, has turned flat and factual. He can remember that night in Sochi very clearly, the way he might remember a movie, but it’s only audio-visual. The _feeling_ , the sensation—that’s all faded away.

Well, not all of it. The dull ache in his heart—the pain all tangled up in the joy of that memory—has not faded away in the slightest. It drops down on Victor’s chest like a lead weight, making his breathing shaky, and he opens his eyes again and sits up, pressing his back against the headboard.

It’s gone. Should he really be surprised? It’s been over a month and a half since the last time he touched Yuuri. Maybe it’s remarkable that he was able to hold onto it for as long as he did. It’s not like those memories ever did him any good, anyway. It was always a brief moment of happiness followed by a long ebb of sadness, and that’s nothing he should’ve been seeking out for himself, over and over again.

He sits there for a long time, breathing against the pressure on his chest, until he hears the pad of Makkachin’s feet as she comes into the room. She jumps up on the bed and comes right over to him, sniffing and nosing at his face. She can always tell when he’s upset. “Silly,” he tells her, trying to keep his voice light. He scratches at her head for a little while, then slides back down under the covers. She flops down next to him immediately, like she knows.

Even with Makkachin in his arms, it takes him a very long time to fall asleep.

 

***

 

Phichit, who is a better friend than Yuuri deserves, gets up two hours early to help Yuuri do his hair and makeup for the interview. “What do they want you to wear?” Phichit asks.

“My warm-up jacket,” Yuuri says. “Like I just stepped off the ice.”

“So like, messy, but in a handsome way?” Phichit asks. He combs Yuuri’s hair vigorously back off his forehead and then carefully teases down a few stray locks in front. “Okay, hand me the gel.”

Phichit takes several photos of Yuuri as they go along, showing his transformation from bleary and bedheaded to artistically disheveled. “I’m going to send these to Victor,” Phichit says. “That poor boy gets so sad when he doesn’t have new pictures of you.”

That _poor boy_ is a good seven years older than Phichit. “Did he ask you to?” Yuuri says.

“No,” Phichit says. “But I can read between the lines. ‘ _Oh, I_ _’m so happy that Yuuri’s getting the media attention he deserves! I just wish it wasn’t at such an inconvenient time.’_ Eighteen sadface parentheses.”

Yuuri smiles despite himself. “Don’t worry, he’s usually a better conversationalist than that,” Phichit says. “He actually gave me some really good advice on my quad toe-loop the other day! I didn’t even ask him, he just saw one of the practice clips I uploaded and started analyzing it.”

That sounds like Victor. After all those weeks of joking about becoming Yuuri’s coach, Victor has stopped joking and just started...coaching, unironically. Yuuri still isn’t quite sure how it happened. But he seems to be enjoying himself, and Yuuri’s free program has definitely benefited from his advice. If Victor can help Phichit land his quad toe-loop more reliably, that’ll put them both in a much better position for Four Continents next month.

When it’s time for the interview to start, Phichit takes a few illusion-destroying pictures of Yuuri sitting at his desk in his warm-up jacket and pajama pants and ducks out of the room. Yuuri faces his webcam with his blank, poster-less wall behind him and accepts the call. As soon as the interview officially begins, Yuuri enters that half-fugue state he always goes into during interviews: he speaks without ever being quite sure what he’s saying. He thinks it goes okay. He talks about his new sponsorship deal, his success at All-Japan, and he even manages to talk a little bit about his disappointment at the Grand Prix Final without getting too flustered. But he doesn’t mention Victor at all. Victor had told him not to, even though it feels like a lie not to bring up a person so instrumental to his success. “Of course I _want_ you to talk about me,” Victor had said. “But you know how the media is. They can’t hold two thoughts in their heads at the same time. If you talk about me, _that_ _’s_ going to be what they focus on. I want them to focus all on you!”

When the interview is finally, blessedly over, the first thing he does is pick up his phone and text Victor with relief:

> Finished!
> 
> I think it went okay, it’s kind of a blur

He keeps an eye on his phone as he quickly changes and gets ready to go to his morning practice, but Victor doesn’t reply. He doesn’t reply as Yuuri walks to the rink, either. Yuuri double-checks the time zone conversion between Detroit and St. Petersburg: it’s a little too early for Victor to be meeting with his personal trainer, but he could be doing other things. He knew Yuuri wouldn’t be able to talk today, after all.

After Yuuri’s first hour of practice, he stops for a water break and checks his phone again. Still nothing. That’s a little unusual—he wonders if maybe he should text something else, in case Victor somehow missed his earlier messages. But he decides not to. This is the hour Victor’s with his personal trainer, and he wouldn’t be looking at his phone anyway.

Yuuri tries not to let his preoccupation interfere with the next hour of practice. How weird is it to think that, less than two months ago, Yuuri had never exchanged more than a handful of words with Victor, and now he’s concerned when Victor doesn’t immediately text him back? When he finally comes off the ice for his lunch break, he picks up his phone and turns it on with uneasy anticipation.

Still nothing. Now a knot of worry is starting to form in his stomach. On the one hand, it’s not like Victor owes Yuuri a quick response: he has his own life to live. But on the other hand, he always _has_ answered his texts quickly before. What if something’s wrong? He opens his text messages and hesitates for a few seconds before he types:

> How has your day been so far?

It feels stilted, and his finger hesitates over the Send button. He never realized how often Victor was the one to initiate their conversations; making an overture like this feels strange. He sets his jaw and presses the button.

He goes and gets his lunch and sits down to eat, phone in hand. Ten minutes pass, fifteen minutes. No response. The knot in his stomach gets bigger. If Victor doesn’t text back by the time Yuuri has to start practice again, is he even going to be able to concentrate? Yuuri checks the time in St. Petersburg again: he’d definitely be back from his personal trainer by now. What could he be doing?

Yuuri could always try calling him. Calling so soon after texting would give away that he’s worried, but...well, he _is_ worried. Before he can talk himself out of it, he presses the Call button and puts his phone to his ear.

The line rings once, twice, and then there’s a _click_. “Hello?” Victor says, his voice thick.

He sounds like he just woke up. Oh God, he’d been _sleeping._ The relief Yuuri feels at hearing his voice is quickly eclipsed by embarrassment. “Um, hi,” Yuuri says. “Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Victor says. Yuuri hears him shifting in bed. “Is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri says. He feels foolish. “I just...I had texted you earlier, and when I didn’t hear back, I was a little...worried.”

“Oh!” Victor says, surprised. “Yuuri, I’m sorry. I was feeling worn out during practice today, so I decided to cancel my conditioning session and take a nap. I must’ve slept through the notifications.”

The knot in Yuuri’s stomach suddenly tightens again. “Oh God, are you feeling sick?”

“No, just tired,” Victor says. “Don’t worry, I can tell the tell the difference between the two. I just needed more rest.”

Yuuri rubs sheepishly at the side of his face. “I’m sorry I woke you up,” he says. “I feel kind of dumb.”

“No, don’t be!” Victor says. His voice is full of warm insistence. “I like it. I mean, I don’t like that I worried you, but I like that you were worried about me. Now if I ever get kidnapped, I’ll know I can count on you to notice I’m gone.”

Yuuri almost laughs. “Is that something you’re worried about?”

“Oh, I was always _very_ worried about kidnapping when I was younger,” Victor says. “I saw a movie where a gang kidnapped America’s best skier so she couldn’t compete and beat their skier for gold, and I was _convinced_ it was going to happen to me, too.” He pauses. “That was probably conceited of me, wasn’t it? I can’t imagine there were gangs betting huge amounts of money on the outcome of Junior Worlds.”

Now Yuuri laughs in earnest. He hears Victor shift in bed again. “Where are you right now?” Victor asks. “Practice?”

“Yeah,” Yuuri says. “It’s my lunch break.”

“Can you talk and eat at the same time?” Victor asks. “I want to hear how your interview went.”

The last vestiges of Yuuri’s embarrassment are washed away by affection. Victor is always so _nice_. “Are you sure you want to listen to me chew?” he asks.

“More than anything,” Victor says with certainty.

 

***

 

The problem with taking a midday nap is that Victor isn’t sleepy when it’s time to actually go to bed. He arrives at practice the next morning with the bags under his eyes masked by concealer. Yakov gives him a hard look. “How are you feeling?” he says. “Better than yesterday?”

“Yes,” Victor says. “I just needed some rest.”

Yakov stares at his face long enough that Victor momentarily doubts his blending skills. But finally Yakov looks away, crossing his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what you need rest _from_ ,” Yakov says. “You’ve hardly been putting in your best effort these last few weeks.”

He’s not wrong, but it’s also not really a conversation Victor wants to be having just then. “I’ll do my best for you today, Yakov!” Victor says, with the kind of bright insouciance he know Yakov hates.

He goes to put on his skates and does his warm-up stretches. When he gets out onto the ice, he mentally assesses what his practice is going to look like, the way he always does before it starts. He’s tired enough that he knows it’s going to affect his skating; Yakov’s going to seethe at his impreciseness. But at least his headspace is better than it was yesterday. Yesterday he had come to practice still carrying that ache in his chest from the night before, and it had leaned against his heart distractingly, throwing off his balance, making him sluggish. Fortunately, after talking to Yuuri yesterday, that feeling has mostly faded away.

When he’s feeling loose enough, he starts doing warm-up jumps. Doubles, as easy as breathing, and then a few triples. He wobbles the landing on a triple loop, and he anticipates Yakov’s bark of _“Sloppy!”_ before Yakov even yells it. He takes off down the ice again, getting into position, and decides to do a triple Axel. It’s Yuuri’s favorite. Victor gears up, takes off, spins, and—

—falls.

It’s not like Victor doesn’t fall during practice. Every instance of it makes Yura so happy that it seems like a shame to deny him. But Victor always _knows_ when he’s going to fall. He can sense the botched takeoff, the insufficient spin, the incorrect positioning of his feet, even if it’s just a fraction of a second before his body hits the ice.

But this time Victor finds himself sitting on the ice with a dull pain in his hip and a sense of total surprise. His body instinctively moved to protect him from the worst of the impact, but the shock of it stopped him from immediately getting back up. “Vitya!” Yakov yells, and Victor looks up to see him stepping onto the ice and skating his way. “Did you hit your head?”

“No,” Victor says.

“Are you hurt? Why are you just sitting there?”

“I’m fine,” Victor says, a little irritably. “Just unpleasantly surprised.”

Yakov arrives next to him and extends his hand. Victor takes it and pulls himself to his feet, wincing a little. He presses his hand against his hip; he’s going to have a hell of a bruise. “I want that checked out,” Yakov says.

 “I’m _fine_ ,” Victor says.

“You have a competition in five days, and you’re falling on jumps you haven’t had problems with in years,” Yakov says. “You’re not _fine_. Off the ice, now.”

Victor goes to the medic on staff and verifies that both his hip and his pride are only bruised. It’s his pride that he’s more concerned about. Victor can admit to himself that he hasn’t been putting in his usual amount of effort these last few weeks—for the first time in a long time, he’s had something to look forward to outside of practice, and he’s been spending his time on _that_ instead of letting his practice expand out to fill the empty hours of his day. But he hadn’t thought he was so far gone that he could flub a jump and not even see it coming.

When he reports back to Yakov, Yakov gives him another hard look. “Go to my office,” he says at last. 

“What for?”

“I’d rather not embarrass you by having this conversation out here where everyone can hear it.”

Victor’s been working with Yakov for over fifteen years, and he’s been subject to numerous lectures, tirades, and dressing-downs in Yakov’s office. But a _conversation_ might be the most ominous one of them all. He follows Yakov, feeling all of fourteen years old again, and takes a seat as Yakov closes the door behind him.

When Yakov sits down across from him, his voice is measured. “I don’t need to tell you what I’m seeing out there,” Yakov says. “You’re sloppy. You lack focus. Your performance at Nationals was weak, and you’re only getting worse.”

Yakov’s flat recitation of the facts is a thousand times worse than when he yells. “You know all that as well as I do,” Yakov says. “So tell me what’s going on.”

Victor hadn’t expected to have the reins of the conversation thrown to him so suddenly. He says, a little stiffly, “I...haven’t been putting in my best effort.”

“Why not?”

There’s no way to answer that question without sounding rude or ungrateful. Victor hasn’t put in his best effort because he hasn’t _wanted_ to put in his best effort. Nothing about his own skating interests him this season. It had taken so much effort to create his programs over the summer, trying to find ways to make them feel fresh and surprising, but after every performance the audience reacts with little more than rote appreciation. What’s the point in putting in his best effort when neither he nor his audience get any real satisfaction from it?

Victor’s won five gold medals so far this season. And not one of them made him as happy as he felt when he watched Yuuri skate _Cloud to Raindrop_ for him at All-Japan. None of Victor’s hours and hours of daily practice give him anything close to the satisfaction he feels when he gives Yuuri the perfect piece of advice, and sees it reflected in Yuuri’s program the next day. _That_ _’s_ where he wants to put his best effort: in seeing Yuuri’s skating grow stronger, more beautiful, more surprising.

But he can’t say that to Yakov.

When Victor doesn’t answer him, Yakov leans forward in his chair slightly. “This boy you’re so enamored with,” Yakov says. “Katsuki. Does he know how bad your skating has gotten since you met him?”

Victor is almost impressed at what a direct stab to the heart that is. “Don’t blame this on him,” he says tightly.

“I don’t,” Yakov says severely. “I doubt he has any idea how irresponsible you’re being in his name. Do you think _he_ _’s_ not going to realize it when he sees how sloppy you’ve gotten next week?

A sudden coldness rolls through Victor. Because he’s right. Even after all these weeks of daily Skype calls, Yuuri still periodically tells Victor that he can pull back if he needs to—because Yuuri _knows,_ even if Victor pretends not to, that there’s a very delicate balance between being a successful skater and having a life _._ If Victor goes to Europeans and skates a shoddy program, Yuuri will know Victor let his focus slip and lied about it.

And what’s worse, Yuuri loves Victor’s skating—he’s been a fan of him for years. A poor performance would disappoint Yuuri on _that_ level, too. The low ache in Victor’s chest, which had almost entirely faded away, yawns open again, wide and deep. The thought of disappointing millions of fans worldwide is nothing compared to the thought of disappointing Yuuri.

Yakov is the one to finally break the silence. “You still have five days until we leave for the competition,” he says. “If you focus, and you _try_ , you can make up some of the ground you lost. But it’s going to require your total concentration. That means you get enough sleep, you stick to your food plan, and you turn off your laptop and cell phone. No distractions.”

No distractions. He means _no Yuuri_. He wants Victor to cut off contact with Yuuri _now_ , right when things are going so well between them, right when Yuuri is starting to open up to Victor more. Who’s to say that after a week of silence, Yuuri won’t have gone back to being shy and unsure? Who’s to say that Victor can even _skate_ with this yawning ache in his heart, without even the cloudy happiness of Yuuri’s presence in his life to keep him going?

Yakov’s expression shifts a little. There’s the faintest shade of sympathy around the edges of his sternness. He knows full well that what he’s asking Victor to do is hard. _That_ _’s_ a part of being a coach Victor hasn’t experienced yet—being the one who has to lay out hard truths in front of someone who doesn’t want to listen. Because Yakov’s right. If Victor doesn’t focus, he’s going to do poorly at Europeans. And after his fall on the ice earlier, he knows it might not be a matter of stepping out onto the ice and knowing when his mistakes are coming. They might blindside him again, leaving him stunned in front of Yuuri and the entire world.

It takes Victor a long time to build up the resolve to speak.

“All right,” he says. “Starting tomorrow. Give me today to...put things in order, and then starting tomorrow, I’ll make Europeans my only priority.”

 

***

 

When Yuuri wakes up the next morning, he moves on sleepy autopilot from his bed straight to his desk. Calling Victor has become muscle memory at this point: he lifts the lid of his laptop, opens Skype, and starts the call. When Victor’s face appears, Yuuri feels an instinctual wash of affection, and he's too sleepy to feel self-conscious about it. “Victor,” he says, which is not strictly necessary, because Victor knows his own name. “Hi.”

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Victor says. His voice is a little softer than usual. “How did you sleep?”

“Mm, fine,” Yuuri says. He makes a belated attempt to run his fingers through his sleep-mussed hair. “How was your practice today?”

“Oh,” Victor says. “It—it could’ve been better.”

There’s an odd note to his voice. It draws Yuuri out of his sleepy fog a little; he leans in and looks more closely at Victor’s image on the screen. Victor’s smiling, but it’s not at all like his usual smile. There’s something hesitant and fragile about it. “What’s wrong?” Yuuri says immediately, a spike of worry bringing him to full consciousness. “Are you still not feeling well?”

“No, it’s not that,” Victor says. “I just—Yuuri, I need to talk to you about something.”

Yuuri stomach sinks. Those words, in that tone, can never mean anything good. “Okay?”

Victor flattens his lips and looks down. “I had a conversation with Yakov today,” he says. “A serious one. He’s not happy with the state of my programs going into Europeans.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says. For some reason, that isn’t what he expected to hear. Over the last few weeks, Victor’s talked about having so-so practices, or struggling with certain program elements, but he always sounded optimistic, like they were challenges to overcome. Yuuri never picked up that they were more serious. He’s _Victor Nikiforov,_ after all. How much could he actually be struggling?

“He’s right to be unhappy,” Victor says. “You saw my performances at Nationals, how they were weaker than usual. They haven’t improved since then. If anything, they’re getting worse.”

For a second Yuuri wants to protest: Victor’s weak performances still outscored every other skater in the world. But he also knows what’s important to Victor isn’t the score—it’s meeting his own expectations. “What are you having trouble with?” Yuuri asks.

Victor sighs. “I don’t know,” he says. “All of it. I don’t feel like my programs are reaching the audience the way I want them to. And when they’re not interested, it makes it harder to stay motivated. It’s...” He hesitates. “Do you remember how you told me, when you skated _Cloud to Raindrop_ , that it was so much easier when you loved it? I just...I don’t feel like I love it, right now.”

It hurts Yuuri to hear him say that. Victor’s programs are gorgeous, marvelous, full of amazing technical feats and an artist’s exacting attention to detail—and he doesn’t love them. _“I_ love them,” Yuuri blurts out, foolishly, like it should change his mind.

Victor’s face softens. “And I’d do them just for you,” he says. “But...”

He looks down again. Yuuri sees him wet his lips. “Yakov wants me to spend the time before we leave doing intensive training,” Victor says. “Extra ice time, extra conditioning. And he wants me to be completely focused on getting into the right mindset for the competition. So...no phone or internet.” He glances up. “I wouldn’t be able to talk to you until Europeans is over.”

Oh.

“That’s—” Yuuri says, and he fully intends the next word to be _fine._ That’s what Yuuri’s been telling him all along: that if he needs to spend less time with Yuuri and more time focusing on his skating, he should.

But the word stalls on his tongue. They’re four days away from Europeans—and the competition itself is nearly a week long—which would mean at least nine days of no contact with Victor. Something in Yuuri goes cold and unhappy at the thought. Yuuri’s talked to Victor every single day for over a month now, and just yesterday, Victor’s three-hour phone silence had preoccupied Yuuri so much that he couldn’t focus on anything else.

And now _nine days._

Yuuri closes his mouth. His half-finished sentence hangs in the air between them. “I don’t have to do it,” Victor says. For a second he looks almost hopeful. “I don’t _want_ to do it.”

And Yuuri’s ashamed of how much he doesn’t want Victor to do it, either. Two months ago, this wouldn’t have even been a question: of _course_ Victor’s skating took priority. But now it takes a real effort for Yuuri to say what he knows needs to be said.

“No,” Yuuri says. He tries to make his voice firm. “Of course you should do it. Maybe if you have the time to really focus on your programs again, you’ll be able to see everything I see in them. They’re _amazing_ , Victor. I want you to be able to see that, even if—” He hesitates. “Even if it means I’ll miss you.”

Yuuri never finds it easy to say things like that—sweet things, sentimental things. But the way Victor’s expression momentarily lifts makes it worth the awkwardness. “But I _already_ miss you,” Victor says. His tone is light, but Yuuri knows he means it. “I don’t want to have to miss you _more_.”

Yuuri tries to think of some light-hearted rejoinder, to help him undercut the heaviness of the moment, but he can’t think of anything. In the end Victor’s the one who breaks the silence, straightening in his seat and visibly pulling his expression up into something closer to normal.

“Well, if I do it, that means I’m not going to be able to help you with your free program for a while,” Victor says. “So I went over yesterday’s video and made a list of things for you to work on while I’m gone.”

He reaches to one side and retrieves what looks like four or five sheets of notebook paper. Yuuri laughs a little helplessly at the sight of all that text. “Oh my God,” he says. “Seriously?”

“Of course!” Victor says briskly. “I’m not going to let you coast in my absence. And I wrote it all out in English this time, so I can scan it and send it to you for your reference. No excuses.”

The wave of affection that washes through Yuuri is almost enough to buoy up the heaviness inside him. Victor is so sweet, and kind, and _ridiculous._

Nine days without him is going to feel like forever.

 

***

 

For four days straight, Victor focuses.

He gets enough sleep. He sticks to his meal plan. He does the visualization exercises he used to do when he was younger, before his winning streak, before he grew confident enough not to need them. He spends more time on the ice and more time with his trainer and when he gets home in the evenings, he does stretches on his exercise mat in the living room. He takes Makkachin on long walks and brushes out her coat carefully and falls asleep with her nestled against his side, because when he lies down in bed he thinks of Yuuri, and she knows.

On the third day, he’s managing the quad-triple at the end of _Stammi vicino_ again. Not as easily as earlier in the season—he ends the program gasping unattractively—but cleanly enough that Yakov is satisfied. On the fourth day, he’s still gasping, but less. He takes Makkachin to her dogsitter and hugs her goodbye and crawls into bed alone that night, his phone alarm set for 4 in the morning, to give him plenty of time to get ready for his mid-morning flight.

He doesn’t sleep. The only way Victor can focus is if he compresses himself down, very hard and very flat, and without Makkachin’s weight against him, the yawning, aching gap in his chest stays open. 

It seems impossible to think that this narrow, pinched life had ever felt livable.

Victor shows up at the airport with faint smudges under his eyes. Yakov doesn’t notice; he’s juggling Georgi, Mila, the support staff, their mountains of luggage. When they board the plane, a 6-hour flight to the UK, Yakov falls asleep almost immediately, his exhaustion well-earned.

Victor stays awake.

 

***

 

The livestream for Europeans falls right in the middle of Phichit’s regular ice time, so Yuuri ends up watching it alone. He falls guiltily into an old habit he’s tried to give up since becoming friends with Victor: he loads up the Twitter accounts of those die-hard fans who document Victor’s every move. There are photos of Victor at yesterday’s public practice session, and as Yuuri looks at them, he feels a little melancholy. Victor’s in all-black athletic gear, his hair charmingly disheveled, his face glowing with exertion and—Yuuri can tell now—judiciously applied makeup. He looks focused, and beautiful, and distant. He looks like _Victor Nikiforov,_ the faraway celebrity who Yuuri spent most of the last decade revering.

But he’s not. He’s _Victor,_ who sends Yuuri twenty texts at a time, and formally introduced Yuuri to his dog, and gave him four and a half pages of agonizingly specific instructions on how to convey _resolve_ through arm positions. Yuuri didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to watch him from afar again, as if the last month and a half never happened.

There are twelve skaters ahead of Victor in the short program. Yuuri watches them all; now that he’s secured his spot at Worlds, they’re officially his competition. Emil Nekola is landing a lot of quads in an otherwise weak program; Mickey Crispino is hesitantly skating on a healing ankle; Chris Giacometti is more confident and sharp than Yuuri’s ever seen him, and comes out of his skate in first place with a new personal best. 

As it gets closer and closer to Victor’s turn, nervousness grips Yuuri. Yuuri has absolutely no idea how Victor’s intensive training has gone. When Victor appears on the sidelines, Yakov at his side, Yuuri leans in closer to his laptop screen to look at him. He can’t tell anything from the expression on Victor’s face. It’s beautiful and impassive.

Finally Victor takes the ice, waving to the crowd, and they roar louder for him than anyone else who’s gone so far. He takes his position, and the camera switches to a close-up. Victor’s face fills up Yuuri’s laptop screen.

And now Yuuri _can_ see something in his expression. It’s uncharacteristic, and so faint that he wonders if anyone else in the world would know to look for it other than him.

Worry.

 

***

 

Victor realizes it in the breath before the song starts.

His head isn’t there. There’s a very specific mindset he needs to get into right before a performance begins, a narrow groove of concentration, and right now he’s standing outside of it. For a decade now, stepping into it has been instinctual; he can’t remember the last time he’s had to try.

But he’s tired from three nights of fitful sleep. He’s lonely and unhappy from a week without Yuuri. When he tells his mind to focus, to push all that away, to squeeze itself entirely flat...

...it doesn’t.

And then it’s too late. The music has started. Muscle memory doesn’t move his feet forward: he has to tell himself to do it, like he’s puppeting himself from the outside. When he takes off down the ice, he’s already a full second out of sync.

 _Oh,_ Victor thinks, a little wildly.

_This is going to be bad._

_***_

Twenty seconds into Victor’s program, Yuuri’s hands fly up to cover his mouth, and he doesn’t lower them for the entire length of the song.

He remembers Victor’s performance at Nationals, the way he had trouble connecting emotionally during the first half. He hadn’t quite managed to hit the grace notes and flourishes he’d planned. But those grace notes are entirely gone tonight. Victor’s carefully studied expressions, the positions of his arms and hands—all of it is loose and unconsidered. His pace just barely hangs on to the flow of the music. His first jump, his signature quad flip, is so clearly headed for disaster that Yuuri closes his eyes when Victor’s skates leave the ice. He hears the crowd gasp.

When Yuuri opens his eyes again, Victor is on his feet, his face grim. He never finds his equilibrium: he fights visibly for every element, every point. He touches down on his triple Axel; he keeps it together for his combination spin; and when it’s time for his quad Sal-triple toe loop, he gets a look of fuming determination on his face and manages it, inelegantly, through raw force of will.

When it’s all finally over, Victor unfolds from his final pose, and Yuuri watches that impassive look slide back onto his face like a mask. He waves to the crowd, ignoring the rain of flowers onto the ice, and skates off to meet Yakov in the kiss and cry.

For a decade, Yuuri’s watched Yakov rant and rave at Victor after his programs. When he was younger, Yuuri was always indignant at the unfairness of it. But today Yakov doesn’t yell. The impassive look on his face matches Victor’s. He says one sentence to Victor when they first sit down, inaudible, and Victor answers him, and then neither of them speak another word as they wait for Victor’s score.

The silence is so much worse than yelling.

Yuuri bunches his fists together and presses them against his stomach. He _knows_ what it feels like to sit there after a botched program: the embarrassment, the frustration, the wide-eyed looks and whispers from people nearby. After his free skate in Sochi, Yuuri had cried over how thoroughly his ambitions had been dashed. If it weren’t for six bottles of champagne and Victor Nikiforov, he might not have ever come back from it.

Seeing it happen to Victor, thousands of kilometers away and completely out of Yuuri’s reach, feels almost as bad.

Victor’s expression doesn’t change when his score arrives. With over twenty skaters to go, he’s in fourth place. The livestream cuts away to the next skater, and that’s it—he’s hidden from Yuuri’s view.

Yuuri feels like he should do something. He could text Victor, maybe, just in case he decides to look at his phone. But what could Yuuri even say? What is there to say that wouldn’t feel trite, or insulting, or fake? **_It wasn_** ** _’t that bad_** _—_ except it _was_. _**I know you**_ ** _’ll do better in the free skate_** _—_ except Yuuri doesn’t know that at all. Victor skating poorly has no precedent.

But then, out of nowhere, Yuuri’s problem solves itself. His ringtone goes off and Victor’s picture shows up on his phone screen, because Victor is _calling_ him. He’s been backstage for less than two minutes. Yuuri fumbles for the _Accept_ button and says, a little desperately, “Victor?”

“Hi,” Victor says. Yuuri’s heart hurts at the tiredness in his voice. “Am I interrupting anything? Can you talk?”

“Of course,” Yuuri says.

There’s a long moment of silence over the line. Victor sighs. “I’m calling you and I don’t even know what to say,” he says. “I didn’t think this through.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Hiding,” Victor says, a hint of dull amusement in his voice. “Yakov’s talking to the reporters first. Who knows what he’s telling them.”

Yuuri almost asks, thoughtlessly, _what happened?_ But he remembers how much that question distressed him after his own botched skate, the way it kept reopening the wound. Victor had carefully avoided saying it when they were in Sochi. “How are you feeling?” Yuuri says instead.

There’s another long silence. “I knew it,” Victor says at last. “Right before the music started. My head just wasn’t there. It was like I was standing outside of myself, controlling everything from a distance.”

Yuuri knows exactly the feeling he means. “And...I didn’t see it coming,” Victor says. “I improved so much these last few days, Yuuri, I really did. Before we left, Yakov was acting like things had gone back to normal. But...”

The sentence falters. Then: “I missed you,” Victor says. The way he says it, so close to his last sentence, almost makes it sound like missing Yuuri was what made everything go wrong.

“I missed you too,” Yuuri says. “I kept forgetting that I couldn’t call you, right when I woke up. I kept opening my laptop and looking for you on Skype.”

“Aw,” Victor says. “I’m sorry. My poor sleepy Yuuri.”

The tired affection in his voice sends heat rushing to Yuuri’s face. Victor never seems to have trouble saying things like that—sweet things, sentimental things. Victor never has any hesitation in showing Yuuri how he feels. “I wish I could be there right now,” Yuuri blurts out.

“I wish you could be, too,” Victor says.

Then, faintly, Yuuri hears a voice say something in Russian in the background. Victor answers, and then says, his voice pained, “Yuuri, I have to go. Yakov’s done talking to the reporters, and I need to figure out what he said to them.” He laughs humorlessly. “Get our stories straight.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says. “Okay. Um—”

He wants to say something encouraging, something heartfelt. But nothing sounds right. _Good luck. I_ _’ll be thinking of you. I’m sure you’ll do fine._

Finally, he says, “I’m here if you need me.”

“Thanks,” Victor says. “Maybe, um, we could talk again before my free skate?”

“Of course,” Yuuri says. “Whenever you want.”

“Okay.” There’s a pause, like Victor is about to say something more, but then he just says, “Bye, Yuuri.”

“Bye,” Yuuri says.

Yuuri hangs up the phone. He feels worse than he did before he answered it. It’s been six days since they last talked to each other, and Yuuri hates that this was their reunion: halting, stilted, sad. Yuuri was the first person Victor called, looking for reassurance, or support, or _something_ , but Yuuri hadn’t known the right thing to say. _I_ _’m here if you need me._ What possible good can Yuuri do him, sitting here tongue-tied, thousands of kilometers away?

It’s not fair. Victor has done _so much_ for him. Victor gives of himself, endlessly, uncomplainingly, and Yuuri gives him so little back. And now when Victor actually needs something, there’s nothing Yuuri can offer him. He doesn’t know how to say things as easily as Victor does—but _words_ are the only thing Yuuri has from this far away.

Why can’t he just _be_ there?

His hand is squeezing his phone so tight that his knuckles hurt. He breathes, slowly, trying to relax his grip. And it’s on the second intake of breath that he feels something shift in his mind: a subtle change in perspective, like he just took one step to the right.

Why _can_ _’t_ he just be there?

He has several thousand dollars sitting in his bank account right now, from a sponsorship he never would have gotten without Victor’s help. He never expected to get that money; it was never a part of this season’s budget.

If Yuuri wanted to, he could buy a plane ticket to the UK right now.

He sits in the silence of that thought for a long moment. Then he drops his phone and grabs his laptop and looks it up. A last-minute, round-trip flight from Detroit to Manchester is—well. He exhales sharply through his nose. It’s less than the amount he made, but not by much.

The sensible part of Yuuri’s mind starts scrambling frantically. It’s a ridiculous idea—completely unfeasible. He’d spend twelve hours on a plane there and twelve hours coming back. Four Continents is in _two weeks._ Yuuri’s reputation has improved after All-Japan, but Four Continents is his first chance to redeem himself on an international stage. Disrupting his training schedule, losing ice time—it’s risky and irresponsible.

Yuuri stares at the list of flights. _I missed you,_ Victor had said. And the way he said it, like it was the tail end of the faltering sentence before it: _I improved so much, Yuuri, I really did. But..._

_I missed you._

Yuuri reaches out and clicks.

 

***

 

Losing is—at the very least—a novelty.

Victor had worked so hard to try and surprise his audience with his programs, but he’d never considered that he could get the same result with one simple, spectacular failure. His audience, his fans, the fans of his competitors—they’d all grown so bored of him winning that the idea of him _losing_ has thrilled them. He’s probably made more people excited by skating badly than he ever would have by skating well.

Yakov doesn’t know what to do with him. In the kiss and cry, he’d asked Victor _“Are you injured?”,_ and when Victor answered _no,_ he didn’t say anything else. If the problem wasn’t physical, then it was mental, and that wasn’t something Yakov could deal with in front of television cameras. Later, when they were back at the hotel, he gruffly laid out a plan for Victor’s rest day before the free skate: resting, conditioning, doing his visualization exercises. _Focusing,_ in other words. No media, no sightseeing, no phone—although Victor had vetoed that last one. Even if he didn’t plan on calling Yuuri, he needed to know that he _could_.

But he hasn’t so far. At one point he’d taken out his phone and considered it, but then, with startling clarity, he remembered something Yuuri had said to him in Sochi.

_I hadn’t earned it._

That was Yuuri’s reason for walking away when Victor offered to take a picture with him. Victor hadn’t understood it at the time; he’d dismissed it as another one of the strange, byzantine rules Yuuri had constructed around his success. But _now_ he understands it. Yuuri had trusted Victor to be responsible with his time, to find that delicate balance between training and a personal life, and Victor hadn’t done it. Victor had disappointed him. Victor hasn’t earned Yuuri’s soft, concerned voice, or his sweet, tentative reassurances.

And now it’s 4 AM on the day of the free skate, firmly within the time designated _sleep_ on Yakov’s schedule, and Victor is awake. Tired, eyes closed, but awake. His free skate is in fourteen hours, and the stress of knowing he should be asleep just holds him there in wakefulness. Insomnia has never been a problem for him until these last few weeks, and he has no idea what to do.

He hears a faint buzzing noise. He opens his eyes and looks around: his silenced phone has lit up on the nightstand. It’s not the short buzz of a text message; someone is calling him. He leans over and picks his phone up.

It’s Yuuri. His heart accelerates. He hasn’t earned Yuuri’s voice, but he’s so hungry for it that he hits the _Accept_ button before he can stop himself. “Yuuri?”

 

 

“Hi,” Yuuri says. “I’m sorry, did I wake you up?”

“No, it’s fine,” Victor says. “I’m awake, I couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh,” Yuuri says. “Okay.”

There’s an odd pause after that. Victor’s brow furrows. He’s not sure why Yuuri decided to call him, but it seems strange that he would call at such a late hour and then not say anything.

“Um,” Yuuri says finally. “Victor, I’ve done something...foolish.”

Victor is distantly charmed by the phrasing. “What?”

“I’m in the lobby.”

Victor pauses. “You’re what?”

“I’m here,” Yuuri says. “At your hotel. In the lobby.”

Victor is silent for a moment. The idea of Yuuri being here, in England, standing three stories below where Victor is lying in bed is so utterly absurd that he can’t process it. “Are you joking?” Victor says.

“No,” Yuuri says. “It’s kind of...gaudy? There’s a lot of fake gold.”

The word _gaudy_ hits Victor like a splash of cold water to the face. The lobby _is_ gaudy, ridiculously so.

And Yuuri is somehow...standing in it.

He opens his mouth. Eight different sentences rise up into his throat and get stuck there in a logjam. He shoves down the covers of his bed and fights to get one out. “You—” he says, which isn’t a sentence. “You’re— _stay there._ _”_

Victor drops his phone on the bed and vaults out of it. Thank God he’s wearing pajamas, because he wouldn’t have been able to slow down enough to get dressed if he tried. He barely has the wherewithal to grab his room key before dashing out into the hall. He runs past the elevator—too slow—and finds the stairs, moving down them as fast as he can without tripping, until he hits the ground floor and takes off down the hall into the lobby.

And—there he is. There’s literally no one else in the lobby except the front desk clerk and Yuuri, standing there in a thick brown coat and blue scarf, a backpack sitting on the floor next to him. When he sees Victor his face goes a little pink. He smiles, and it’s tentative, almost abashed. “Hi,” he says.

It takes the longest three seconds in all of eternity for Victor to get from the hallway to the middle of the room, and then Yuuri is in his arms, warm, substantial, impossibly real _._ Oh God, he’d forgotten _everything_ about Yuuri: his height, his scent, his strong and slender frame. Victor crushes his face down into Yuuri’s shoulder, inhaling him, a prickle starting up behind his eyes. _“Yuuri,”_ he says, stupidly, because it’s the only word his brain is broadcasting.

 

 

One of Yuuri’s hands moves up to rest on the back of Victor’s head. “Hi,” he says again, and for some reason that’s the twist of the valve that opens up Victor’s tear ducts. He pushes his wet eyes against the cloth of Yuuri’s scarf and squeezes him as tightly as he can. It’s the most amazing feeling in the world. How had he spent a month and a half trying to satisfy himself with only the _memory_ of this feeling? How had he never realized there was a part of himself that he’d starved into dormancy, a part of him that he can _feel_ filling up under the pressure of Yuuri’s arms?

Yuuri’s hand on the back of his head moves a little, his fingers slipping beneath the strands of Victor’s hair. “Oh,” Yuuri says, surprised. “I always wondered what your hair felt like.”

It sends a little shock through Victor. He lifts himself back up to his full height, looking down on Yuuri’s flushed, smiling face, and immediately sticks both of his hands in Yuuri’s hair.

Yuuri’s face turns both red and adorably confused. _“Victor,”_ he says, almost sputtering.

 _“Every morning_ I see you with your hair sticking up all over the place,” Victor says, “and every single time I’ve wondered what it felt like.” He combs his fingers through Yuuri’s hair, relishing the texture. “It’s so thick! I knew it would be.”

Yuuri smiles at him. The curve of his lips on his upraised face sends another shock through Victor. Victor could kiss him. Should he kiss him? Yuuri’s lips are _right there._ Victor hasn’t said _I love you_ yet _,_ and technically Yuuri hasn’t even said _I like you_ yet _,_ but what else could it mean that Yuuri is _here_ , in England, when he should be thousands of kilometers away in America? Why else would Yuuri come all this way, if it wasn’t out of love?

But it gives Victor a momentary flash of horror to imagine kissing Yuuri in that moment and feeling Yuuri pull away, politely, uncomfortably. Victor wouldn’t survive it; his heart would break. So he doesn’t kiss him. He wraps his arms around Yuuri again and crushes him against his chest, pressing his face back into Yuuri’s scarf. “You smell so good, _”_ Victor says, muffled.

He feels the vibration of Yuuri’s laugh against his chest. “I’ve been on a plane for twelve hours,” he says. “I really doubt it.”

 _Twelve hours._ Victor lifts his head again and looks at him. “Yuuri!” he exclaims, the reality of the situation finally pushing its way into his mind. “How are you _here?_ Four Continents is in two weeks!”

“I know,” Yuuri says.

“How on earth did you convince Celestino to let you leave?”

Yuuri’s face turns slightly guilty. “I didn’t,” he says. “I just texted him from the airport.”

After a month and a half of frustration with Celestino’s choreography choices, this might be the first time Victor’s ever felt sympathy for him. “You’re a _terrible_ student,” Victor says, giving Yuuri a deep, chastising squeeze. “It was really twelve hours? You need to stretch! All that sitting’s terrible for you!” He glances over at the hotel’s front desk, where the clerk is very politely pretending not to notice them. “Did you get a hotel room?”

“Not yet.”

“Good,” Victor says. “You’re staying with me. Come on.”

He gathers Yuuri firmly against his side and picks up his backpack from the floor. Part of him wants to pick _Yuuri_ up, to carry him around the hotel halls like a prize, but that’s probably a step too far. So he just holds Yuuri in the crook of his arm from the lobby to the elevator and all the way up to Victor’s room, where the annoyingly narrow door means Victor has to let go of him so they can walk in single-file.

Yuuri looks around the room. “You only have one bed,” he says dryly.

“I am not sleeping a _second_ while you’re here,” Victor declares. He feels so wide awake that he might never need to sleep again. “Here, I have my exercise mat, let me put it out.”

“Can I use your bathroom first?” Yuuri says, unwinding his scarf and setting it on the bed.

Victor thinks it’s exceedingly cruel that Yuuri wants to put a closed door between them so soon after arriving, but: “Of course,” he says.

Yuuri lays his jacket down too and disappears into the bathroom. Victor sits down on the bed and—ridiculously— _misses_ him. He picks up Yuuri’s scarf and turns it over in his hands. It’s dark blue—the perfect shade for Yuuri’s complexion. Victor puts it around his own neck and wraps it around and around, until it’s bunched up so high it’s covering his mouth. It smells like Yuuri, too. Victor is never taking it off.

When Yuuri emerges a minute later, he sees Victor sitting there in his scarf and gets a look of fond exasperation on his face. “What do you think?” Victor says through a mouthful of fabric.

“I think you should take that off before anyone finds out you were wearing a Walmart scarf.”

“Oh!” Victor says, pushing it down off his mouth. “I went to one of those during Skate America last year! It was enormous.” He angles his eyes down, examining the fabric. “How much did this cost?”

“Four dollars.”

He does the mental currency exchange. “Oh, _wow_ ,” Victor says. “I’ve paid more than that for _toast_ before.” Then something occurs to him. He looks over at Yuuri with narrowed eyes. “Yuuri,” he says. “How much did it cost you to fly here?”

Yuuri looks evasive. “It’s fine,” he says. “The money I got from the Piedmont sponsorship covered it.”

Victor leaps up from the bed and clutches his poor, four-dollar-scarf-wearing Yuuri in his arms. “I’ll pay you back,” he says.

“No.”

“I’ll pay you _back,_ _”_ Victor insists, squeezing him, “so the next time you get the impulse to drop everything and come see me, you’ll do it again.”

Yuuri looks like he still wants to argue, but he doesn’t. He looks up at Victor with a resigned little smile on his face. Hugging Yuuri is so wonderful and so _dangerous_ , because his lips are always _right there_ , sweet and soft and perfect and—

Victor shakes himself out of that train of thought. “Okay, you need to stretch,” he tells Yuuri. “And maybe do some conditioning, too. Four Continents is _so soon,_ Yuuri!”

Yuuri doesn’t say what Victor knows he must be thinking: that Europeans isn’t even over. That Victor’s free skate is coming up in fourteen hours. That Victor’s career and reputation are currently balanced on a precipice, and everything Victor does between now and then could tip him over the wrong way.

Yuuri just says, “Yes, coach.”

 

***

 

Yuuri isn’t very good with words. He can never come up with the kind of effortlessly sweet things Victor always says to him; he can never phrase his reassurances in a way that makes them actually reassure. He couldn’t even figure out what to say after Victor’s troubled short program, when _Yuuri_ , more than anyone, knows what it feels like to fail.

But Victor had clearly needed something from him. So Yuuri is just giving Victor...himself.

And it seems like that’s enough. Victor hugs Yuuri more in the first hour of his arrival than Yuuri’s ever been hugged in his entire life. Victor switches instantly into coach mode, making Yuuri stretch, putting him through the paces of a brief workout. Victor smiles and laughs and talks excitedly as they eat a room service breakfast, catching each other up on a week’s worth of missed news. “Now that Phichit got Celestino to say yes to _Shall We Skate,_ he’s trying to convince him to let him do _Terra Incognita_ for his free program,” Yuuri says.

“Oh God,” Victor bursts out. “From the _sequel?_ Yuuri, he _can_ _’t.”_

“Why not?”

“He’ll be dedicating his _entire season_ to those terrible movies,” Victor says. “What if they get popular again? Tell him I forbid it.”

“You tell him,” Yuuri says. “I have to live with him.”

Just as they’re finishing breakfast, they’re interrupted by a knock at Victor’s door. Victor gets up and opens it. “Yakov!” he says. “Good morning!”

He says the phrase in English, and the half of Yakov’s face that Yuuri can see through the doorway creases with confusion. “Look who came to visit me!” Victor says, stepping back and gesturing toward Yuuri.

Yuuri’s stomach drops a little when Yakov’s eyes land on him. For a second, Yakov looks surprised—and then a look of utter weariness passes over his face. “Katsuki,” he says. “How long have you been here?”

“Um,” Yuuri says, “four hours?”

Yakov looks suspiciously at Victor’s bright, smiling face. “How much sleep did you get before he got here?”

“Absolutely none!” Victor says.

Yakov’s face settles into a deep scowl. Yuuri is starting to get a better sense of their dynamic now: Yakov might yell, but Victor seems like a charming headache of a student. “And when were you planning to sleep?” Yakov demands. “I assume Katsuki came here to watch you _skate_ , not sleepwalk through your routine tonight!”

Yuuri remembers Victor’s vow not to sleep at all while Yuuri is there, and he’s suddenly afraid that Victor will tell Yakov as much. “When does he have to be at the rink?” Yuuri asks.

“4 o’clock at the latest.”

That’s eight hours away. “I’ll—I’ll make sure he sleeps,” Yuuri says.

Victor looks momentarily betrayed, but when he turns back to Yakov he’s cheerful again. “Can you get Yuuri a credential to come backstage tonight?” he says. “I won’t be able to skate without him.”

Yakov looks between the two of them grimly. Then, with the air of someone washing his hands of a problem, he says _“Fine”_ and leaves. 

Victor sits back down at the table. “Good thinking,” he says. “Lying to Yakov is one of the easiest ways to make him happy.”

“I wasn’t lying,” Yuuri says. “Of course you have to sleep before you skate.”

“Yuuri, I’m not missing a _single second_ with you,” Victor says. “Not when you’re only here for a day.”

Yuuri looks at the dark circles under Victor’s eyes. This is the first time Yuuri’s seeing Victor before he gets ready for the day, before he styles his hair and covers up the imperfections on his face. He’s still handsome, but it’s not that distant, unattainable handsomeness from Yuuri’s posters. He looks...tired. A little careworn.

It occurs to Yuuri in that moment that he knows exactly how to make Victor go to sleep. Yuuri might not be the best with words, but he knows from experience that when he gets it right, Victor can’t fight him. “Victor,” Yuuri says carefully. “If you take a nap...I’ll take it with you.”

Victor’s eyes go wide. Then his face turns slightly pink. A tiny part of Yuuri revels in his success: Victor confidently flirts with Yuuri all the time, but whenever Yuuri tries it, Victor acts like no one’s ever flirted with him before in his life.

“Um,” Victor says. “Yuuri?”

“What?”

“I’m suddenly _exhausted._ _”_

So Yuuri tamps down the spike of embarrassment he feels and goes over with him to the bed. He can’t help feeling awkward as he climbs in: he hasn’t shared a bed with very many people in his life. Victor sets his cell phone alarm and climbs in on the opposite side.

Yuuri rolls onto his side to face Victor. Victor’s face is still pink, but he’s smiling. He snakes his arm out across the strip of bed in between them and feels for Yuuri’s hand. Yuuri takes it. “Can’t I just stay awake and look at you?” Victor asks.

 _That_ _’s_ the kind of the high-level flirting Yuuri will never be able to manage. “No,” Yuuri says. “You have to sleep, so you’re feeling your best tonight when you go out and skate that program I love so much.”

The edges of Victor’s smile soften. “You love it, huh?”

Yuuri nods against his pillow. For some reason, the lightness on Victor’s face dwindles a little, like a cloud is passing over his expression. Yuuri squeezes his hand. “What is it?”

Victor’s eyes flick down, away from Yuuri's. He doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “I’m going to do my best for you, Yuuri,” he says. “I don’t want to disappoint you. But...” The edge of his mouth lifts ruefully. “I might.”

It makes Yuuri’s heart hurt unexpectedly. Yuuri’s used to that feeling when he and Victor are separated, but not when Victor’s right here, so close to him. “Victor,” Yuuri says. “I promise I’m not going to be disappointed.”

Victor doesn’t look at him. “I know Yakov said I came here to watch you skate,” Yuuri says. “But I didn’t, really. I just came here so I could be with you.”

Victor glances up. There’s an unreadable look in his eyes. “I already know what you’re capable of,” Yuuri says. “So if it doesn’t happen tonight, that’s okay.” He squeezes Victor’s hand again. “Maybe you could just...try to find something you love in it. That’s what I really want to see.”

For a moment, Victor is very still. Then he moves, clumsily sliding across the gap in between them until he's close enough to wrap his arms around Yuuri, pressing his face against Yuuri's shirt. “Okay,” Victor says. There’s something hushed in his voice. “I’ll try.”

Yuuri shifts and puts his arms around Victor, too. A warm thrill is running through his veins. Victor’s hugged him approximately two hundred times at this point, but there’s something very different about this. The weight of Victor’s head is a trusting, unfamiliar pressure on Yuuri’s chest, and his silver hair is right below Yuuri’s chin. Yuuri lifts his hand and runs his fingers through it, the strands so much lighter and silkier than his own.

He waits, patiently, for Victor to finally have his fill of the hug and pull away. He doesn’t. After a few minutes, Yuuri says “Victor?” and cranes his neck to look at his face.

Victor’s asleep. He’s fallen asleep with his cheek squashed against Yuuri’s chest, his lips slightly parted, his breathing steady and regular.

Yuuri rests his head back and looks at the ceiling. He feels a tiny bit ridiculous. He had known Victor needed _something_ from him, but he never would have guessed _human pillow._

 

***

 

Victor sleeps for six and a half hours, and when his alarm goes off he wakes up feeling more clear-headed than he’s felt in weeks.

Yuuri, on the other hand, half-sits up in Victor’s bed and looks vaguely furious to be awake. Victor loves him so much. “Go back to sleep,” he tells him. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

Yuuri is unconscious again within seconds. Victor goes into the bathroom and starts the shower running, and when he steps under the spray he closes his eyes and tries to make an assessment of himself. He feels well-rested. A little stiff in his joints. Mentally, he’s a sea of contentment, except for the tiny scratching reminder in the back of his head that Yuuri’s getting on a plane tomorrow morning. A month ago, back when he trusted his own perception of his abilities, he would’ve said he was in good shape for today’s free skate. But today he’s not going to know if that’s true until he’s on the ice, in the moment before the song starts.

He’s not going to worry about it. Yuuri has given him something else to focus on. _Try to find something you love in it,_ he said, and Victor would happily disappoint every judge and audience member tonight if it meant he could show that to Yuuri. 

After his shower, Victor goes through his normal pre-competition routine. He does his hair and makeup, followed by some stretching. That’s the point when Yuuri wakes up: Victor looks up from a particularly deep stretch to see Yuuri sitting up in bed, his hair wild, staring intently at Victor on his exercise mat. “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty!” Victor says. “Are you enjoying the show?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says, because sleepy Yuuri is _shameless._

When he’s awake enough, Yuuri gets ready too: his hair proves to be impossible to tame, so finally he combs it straight back off his forehead, the way he’d worn it in his television interview last week. It’s a distractingly sexy look. Now every time Victor hugs him—six times so far in the twenty minutes Yuuri’s been awake—it makes it even harder not to give into temptation and kiss him.

When Yakov arrives, he seems begrudgingly impressed that Victor is awake and ready. He gives Yuuri a lanyard to wear with his backstage credential on it, and when they go downstairs to meet Georgi and the other support staff in the lobby, Victor feels very satisfied at the way Yuuri slots right into their existing team.

The two of them don’t talk much on the ride over. Victor puts his arm around Yuuri, and Yuuri lets his head settle lightly against Victor’s shoulder, and it makes Victor feel so perfectly content that he almost doesn’t want to get out of the car when it arrives at the rink. “You should go in by yourself,” Yuuri says. “The media’s going to be watching you.”

Victor makes a face. He knows Yuuri’s right. The media can only ever focus on one thing at a time, and right now they're focused on Victor’s failed short program. Victor doesn’t want to drag Yuuri into that depressing storyline.

So that makes this their last private moment together. Victor looks at Yuuri and says, lightly, “Do I get a kiss for good luck?”

Yuuri flushes a little. Then, quite suddenly, a firmness enters his expression. “You’re about to go skate a program about _longing,_ ” Yuuri says. “I’ll kiss you when you get back.”

Victor stares at him. The way Yuuri says it, the look on his face—it doesn’t seem like an empty flirt.

It seems like a promise.

“Okay,” Victor says, a little dazed. A smile appears on Yuuri’s face, and Victor leans forward, hugs him one last time, and gets out of the car.

When he goes into the rink, most of the people he passes don't look him in the eye. He can’t tell if they’re being polite, or if they’re worried that bad luck is catching. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. His mind has latched onto a thought, and now he’s turning it over and over in his mind, trying to see it from every angle.

 _Stammi vicino_ is a program about longing—choreographed by someone whose life had grown so narrow that he’d forgotten what longing felt like. It’s operatic and theatrical—and, to be less charitable, _affected._ Victor practiced all those expressions of sadness and melancholy ahead of time; they’re as real as the glycerin tears actors cry in sad movies.

Victor created this program with only an abstract understanding of its premise, but now he finds that he’s unexpectedly grown into it. He knows what longing feels like now. It’s not just sadness and melancholy: it’s a dull ache, a stabbing want, a maddening frustration.

Yuuri had said, _try to find something you love in it._ And that’s easy, Victor realizes. Victor loves Yuuri, and Yuuri has buried himself in the heart of this program. In thirteen hours, Yuuri’s going to get on a plane back to America, and Victor’s not going to see him again until Worlds.

 _Stammi vicino_ is a plea: _stay close to me, don’t go._

Victor is going to skate it like he means it.

 

***

 

The wait for Victor’s performance is agonizing. He’s not going until late in the lineup, so Yuuri has nothing to do but sit in the arena seats reserved for skaters and their teams, watching the other performances. Some of the people sitting nearby give him the occasional curious look; they probably recognize him and are confused to see him there. When Yuuri was walking backstage earlier, Chris Giacometti had seen him and done a literal double-take. “Don’t tell me you’ve defected to Russia already?” he’d said. “You and Victor move fast.”

“Hi Chris,” Yuuri said.

“How long have you been here?” Chris asked. “I don’t remember seeing you during the short program.”

“I flew in this morning,” Yuuri said. “To support Victor.”

“Oh, good Lord,” Chris said, faintly annoyed. “If he ends up winning gold through the _power of love_ , I’m going to be furious with you.”

Chris was in first place to Victor’s sixth. He’d never been ahead of Victor going into the free skate before, and he must’ve known this was his best shot at finally beating him. “How was he when you saw him?” Chris asked. “I texted him a few times yesterday, but...it was awkward.”

“I'm not sure how he’s going to do today,” Yuuri said. “I don’t think he knows, either.”

“He does love his surprises, doesn’t he?” Chris said. “Well, I’m going to do my best to give him one.” He lifted a suggestive eyebrow. “Wish me luck, Yuuri?”

“You don’t need it,” Yuuri said. “I saw your short program. It was amazing.”

Chris looked genuinely taken aback by the compliment. “Thank you,” he said after a moment. It might’ve been the first thing he’d ever said to Yuuri that didn’t sound like flirting.

Now, finally, _finally,_ it’s time for the last group of six. Yuuri’s stomach has been tied in a loose knot all evening and it abruptly pulls taut. He sees Victor standing there with the other skaters, luminously beautiful even from a distance, and when they go to warm up, Yuuri tracks Victor the entire time, trying to discern the future in his movements and expressions. He knows it’s useless. Victor described the way things went wrong before his short program: it happened unpredictably, out of nowhere.

Victor is the first in the group to go. Yuuri can feel the tension in the arena as the warm-up ends; it’s the first time in a long time that the stakes have been this high. Fans of the other competitors are finally seeing a real possibility of their favorites winning gold. But when Victor skates out and waves to the crowd, the cheers and applause are thunderous. They still love him. Why does Victor think they don’t still love him?

Victor goes into his opening pose, and the audience quiets. Yuuri feels an aching anticipation in that moment of silence, almost too much to bear. This is the precise moment Victor finds out. This is the moment when Victor knows, before anyone else, whether or not his program is headed for disaster.

The music starts. Victor always begins his performance by lowering his head, then lifting it up on the first swell of music, his expression full of melancholy. But when he lifts his head now, his expression is...blank. Bare. When Victor puts his hand to his head and swivels out of position, the effect is not the languid, yearning sadness that’s supposed to match his melancholy. There’s a muscularity to it that makes the gesture feel rawer, more uncertain. When he pushes off with one skate, reaching up into the air, it’s not the vaguely spiritual gesture it’s always been. It’s _reaching_ , a little desperately, full of ungraceful desire.

These are _choices_ he’s making—Yuuri can see that immediately. Yuuri knows this program inside and out, its cadences and emotional rhythms, and he can tell that Victor is in control and deliberately doing things differently. The song is an aria, and the emotions Victor usually portrays are suitably grand to match: a love and longing and despair that’s richly elegant. But right now the elegance is gone. He’s thrown it out and replaced it with starkness, with a feeling of longing that comes from a cracked foundation of pain.

When it’s time for his first jump, a quad Lutz, Yuuri holds his breath. Victor goes into it like a burst of frustration is propelling him through the air, and when his skate firmly and cleanly hits the ice, the entire arena exhales with audible relief. His quad flip comes not long after: it’s gorgeous, perfect, a leap of controlled desperation that sets him right back on the ice, no closer to what he longs for.

Yuuri’s nervousness melts away. Victor’s found his focus, and he’s clearly found something else, too: a way back into the program.   _Stammi vicino_ is about longing, and as Victor traces its story on the ice, Yuuri can see he’s showing the audience something new, and difficult, and _true._ Victor knows what it’s like to miss someone, to want to be with someone who’s impossibly far away. He’s reflecting it back out in every movement he makes: the unfairness of it, the heartache.

 _I missed you,_ Victor had said to him, but until now, Yuuri hadn’t realized just how much.

Victor skates cleanly until the very end of the program, when it’s time for his quad-triple. He lowered the difficulty of it during Nationals, and Yuuri expects him to do that again. But no: he jumps and lands the quad toe loop to momentary cheers, and then takes off on the triple toe loop—

—and pops it.

The crowd’s audible swerve from excitement to disappointment is almost comical. Yuuri puts his hands over his face briefly. It was so close to being a perfect program, but...Victor is Victor. Of course he was going to try.

Yakov is going to have _so much_ to yell at him for in the kiss and cry.

 

***

 

“You didn't think to tell me you were going to completely change the interpretation on the fly?” Yakov rages when Victor sits down next to him. “And I _explicitly_ told you not to try the quad-triple! It was the last thing I said to you backstage!”

“Yes,” Victor agrees.

“What on earth are the judges supposed to make of that performance?” Yakov says. “You looked _angry_. And those jerky arm gestures—the piece is _opera_ , you can’t just paste modern dance on top of opera and expect them to match!”

“Well, I was just trying something out,” Victor says cheerfully. “If it didn’t work, no harm done.”

 _“No harm done?”_ Yakov roars.

Victor smiles and waves at the camera and takes a long sip from his water bottle. Yakov’s irate reprimands wash comfortably over his ears. Poor Yakov. Victor keeps forgetting to try and stop being so troublesome for him. But Victor is too satisfied by his performance to regret any of it, except maybe the popped triple. But still, he had been _so close_ to getting it right.

Victor’s score, when it arrives, is higher than Yakov thought it would be—Victor can tell, because Yakov’s ranting lowers in volume by half. He’s in first place now, but there are still five skaters to go. Victor imagines there’s a _lot_ of mental math being done right now, to see what kind of scores everyone will need to bump him out for gold.

Victor doesn’t care about gold. He leaves the kiss and cry and goes backstage, charmingly deflecting the reporters waiting for him—“I need to take care of one thing first, my apologies”—and hurries into the hall leading to the reserved seats in the arena. He finds Yuuri already there, running toward Victor, his eyes alight. “Yuuri!” Victor exclaims, grinning. “What did you think?”

Victor’s still in his skates, and when Yuuri throws his arms around him, Victor has to lean down to squeeze him as tightly as he wants. “It was amazing,” Yuuri says, his breath warm against Victor’s ear. “I’ve never seen you do anything like it before. It was—” Yuuri searches for the words. “It was _you._ I don’t think I’ve ever seen _you_ so clearly on the ice before.”

Victor is grinning so hard his face hurts. Even if the entire audience was as baffled by his performance as Yakov was, Victor knows it was a success, because Yuuri saw him, and Yuuri saw what he was trying to say.

_This is what it feels like without you._

Yuuri pulls back a little. Victor looks down at his upturned face, the soft, smiling curve of his lips, and he knows if he kissed Yuuri now, Yuuri would kiss him back.

But Yuuri’s hands are already reaching up for Victor’s face. Victor only has one heart-fluttering moment to anticipate it before Yuuri’s lips are pressed against his, boldly, kissing him with a surety that Victor never expected. A thrill washes through Victor from head to toe, a satisfaction so complete that it fills up every empty space inside him. He takes Yuuri’s face in his hands and kisses him back, with everything he has.  

Victor has never, ever met anyone as surprising as Yuuri.

 

 

It’s Yakov who finally ruins the moment. He steps out into the hall and snaps, “Vitya! What are you doing? The reporters are waiting for you!”

Yuuri pulls back a little, flushed and smiling. “You should go,” he says.

“No,” Victor says, squeezing him closer. “I’ve done a million interviews. They can just re-use one of the old ones.”

“You’ve never skated a program like that before,” Yuuri says. “Nothing you’ve ever said before would fit it.”

Yuuri is very cunning, using Victor’s pride in originality against him. Victor sighs. “Come up to the stands afterward,” Yuuri says. “We can watch Chris skate.”

So Victor reluctantly separates himself from Yuuri and goes back to the reporters. They’re excited: Victor’s free skate score was high enough to put him back in contention for gold, but just low enough that it’s not a sure thing. “Your interpretation of the piece was different tonight,” one of the reporters says. “What was behind this unexpected change?”

The _only_ reason Victor doesn’t say _my boyfriend Yuuri Katsuki_ is because technically he hasn’t asked Yuuri to be his boyfriend yet.

When the reporters are finally finished with him, Victor goes up to the stands and sits down next to Yuuri. “You’re on the podium!” Yuuri says. “The last two scores didn’t beat you.”

Victor takes Yuuri’s hand in his, and he almost opens his mouth to say _“It doesn’t matter.”_ But in that moment he feels unexpectedly somber at the prospect of his gold medal streak finally ending. He'd worked hard for that streak, even if it hadn't satisfied him in a long time. So he doesn’t say anything. He squeezes Yuuri’s hand in mute suspense and turns his attention to the ice.

Emil Nekola is halfway through his program; even without seeing the first half, Victor knows after a minute of watching that he’s not going to surpass Victor’s score. Emil's jumps are big, but too many of his other elements lack polish. When his score arrives, it puts him in second place. He’s made the podium, but whether that means silver or bronze depends entirely on Chris.

Victor does some mental math of his own. If Chris skates the same program he skated at the Grand Prix Final, clean, he’ll beat Victor’s combined score. It's entirely within his reach. Gold would certainly make Chris happy: in their ten years of friendship, Chris has often jokingly complained about the way Victor always hogs the center spot on the podium.

Well, it’s up to him, now. Victor put everything he could onto the ice tonight; if Chris can do the same, then he deserves to win.

Chris skates out, waving to the audience, and Victor can hear the anticipation in the crowd’s cheers. They know he could take gold, too. Chris strikes his opening pose: arms arched at his sides, one hip jutted out in a way that makes his ass more prominent. He knows what his strengths are. “Did you know Chris before he cut his hair?” Victor asks Yuuri. “He used to be this curly-haired little angel. Pure innocence.”

The music starts. Chris swings his arms up dramatically and then slides his hands suggestively down his sides.

“I don’t believe you,” Yuuri says.

Chris skates a very polished, very sexy, very clean program. As it goes further and further on with no mistakes, Victor can feel Yuuri’s hand tightening in his, like he’s nervous on Victor’s behalf. Victor loves him for it. Chris puts in the performance of a lifetime, confident, exuberant, and when it’s over, he waves to the crowd and has to pause to wipe the tears from his eyes, because he knows it was enough.

Yuuri holds Victor’s hand tight and doesn’t say anything until it’s official. By a comfortable four points, Chris takes gold, bumping Victor down to silver and Emil down to bronze.

Victor looks over at Yuuri. The concern on his face is very sweet. “Are you okay?” Yuuri asks.

And Victor has to admit: it hurts more than he thought it would. After so many years of being defined by his gold medals, it’s hard to watch that slip away.

But he says, “I’m okay.” Because he is.  

A silver medal with Yuuri by his side is worth every gold medal he's ever earned.

 

***


End file.
